“Your name came up at lunch today,” said my neighbour during our daily debrief. A friend of hers had complained there are no more left leaning gay guys in Vancouver. And she said, “What about Tony Correia?”
Left leaning gay guy? Why not just label me a radical thinker and put my name on a no-fly list?
If corporate culture has taught me anything it is how to suppress my emotions while listening to opposing political points of view — what Protestants call Christmas.
But it’s getting harder. People seem so willing to drink the Kool-aid.
There was an article on the front cover of Metro a few weeks ago about gay Conservative candidates. In it the president of Vancouver Pride Society is quoted as saying, “It is always a benefit anytime any person from the gay and lesbian community steps forward and puts their hat into the ring because it allows us an additional voice.”
If only that were true.
Our first gay Conservative candidate was caught on camera leaving a party meeting with his tail between his legs when the subject of gay marriage was brought to the table. How is that providing us with an additional voice?
The current incarnation couldn’t convince his party to make it mandatory for schools to change their codes of conduct to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Perhaps he would have made a more convincing case had he pounded on the podium like Brezhnev at the UN as when they threatened to take away his gratuitous raise.
To me a Conservative is someone who has lost touch with what it means to struggle.
A friend I hadn’t seen in 20 years came to visit a while ago. On a bike tour of the city, he asked why the Downtown Eastside hadn’t been redeveloped for condos.
“Because it’s the only affordable housing left in the city.”
“So?”
“Those people have to go somewhere right?”
Like so many people in charge, he didn’t dignify my question with an answer.
My friend told me an inheritance had afforded him the down payment on a home in San Francisco. Before that he had been paying $1,100 to rent a place with four people.
“It cost me 10 grand to get the tenants out. It was so unfair.”
And paying $1,100 for a bedroom is?
His last day here, he said, “You know Tony, I was thinking a lot about what you said about the homeless and affordable housing and then I thought, ‘why should I care?'”
The sad part is I didn’t have an answer.
“How does it feel to be the last left leaning gay guy in Vancouver?” my neighbour asked.
“Lonely,” I sighed.
Why you can trust Xtra
