It is said that everyone is Irish on March 17th. Does that mean everyone is gay for Pride Weekend? The Toronto Pride festival is in full swing (pun intended), with the parade kicking off in about half an hour. Although, nothing is ever on time. Back in my fag-hag days, I deliberately had to tell the boys to meet me half an hour before I actually intended to show up. There was EST (Eastern Standard Time) and FST (Fag Standard Time), which like Newfoundland, ran about 30 minutes behind everyone else.

I was a regular along the Montreal parade route almost every year. It was a helluva party, with lots of eye candy (if you didn't look to closely at some of the women), and I always had friends who were part of the show. Last year for Pride we met up with some friends who came to Toronto from Montreal. Nice brunch, but we skipped the parade to go to a baseball game. Too bad, too. The parade would have been much more fun (sorry, y'all, but I'm just not into baseball).

This year I'm skipping the parade for two reasons. The main one is purely aesthetic. It's friggin hot out there! I plan to spend the day by the pool, not packed in like sardines along the route downtown. Gay boys wear too much cologne as a rule, and I swear I would pass out in this heat from it.

And I'm staying away because this year there is an air of a political standoff running through this city like an electrical undercurrent. Pride started off 25 years ago as a protest against discrimination. It quickly turned into a festival, open to all who wanted to be a part of it (including me). But this year, it is almost a snubbing of noses, since the participants who come in from all over North America and beyond are mostly here to celebrate the fact that Canada will be swallowing same sex marriage as early as tomorrow. I daresay it will be one of the more bitter things being swallowed this Pride Weekend.

The colourful parade follows yesterday's 10th annual Dyke March, where several lesbian couples took the opportunity to tie the knot.

One of those couples was Ann Hudson and Paula Kruse, both of Denver, Colo., who read their vows in front of throngs of strangers, at a ceremony they could not have in their home country.

The first stop for the newlyweds was the Dyke March.

"We just thought it would be great to get married and then hop right into the Dyke March," Kruse told the Toronto Star.

So on this weekend of Pride, us heterosexual couples who have taken the vows of marriage (civil or religious) will hide in our homes. The tables have turned, and we are now the excluded ones. Men and women have inhernet differences: Men pee standing up, and women can't parallel park. It's a fact of life. Gays and straights have differnces too: You leave my marriage alone, and I'll stay out of your bath house (or group therapy, for the gay ladies among us).

But according to the [Peel District School] board's Issue Paper #6 on Heterosexism, (a discussion paper and resource for teachers and school administrators, which flows from their Fall 2002 policy document, The Future We Want), homophobia is, in common usage, "the fear of having intimate relationships with persons of the same sex."

The paper further expounds, "Many people are not homophobic but have a strong heterosexual bias. The effect on gay/lesbian/bisexuals is similar."

If by "intimate" the paper means physically intimate, I must admit that while not fearful of having such a relationship with another woman, I have no desires in that direction whatsoever. My heterosexual attractions are strong ones. But I had no idea that my sexual preferences were having any effect on gay/lesbian/bisexuals.

So there you have it: I don't sleep with my girlfriends and I've been happily married to the same wonderful guy for almost 20 years. That, apparently, makes me both biased, and a homophobe.

I used to have a t-shirt that said Normal is Boring. Now, apperntly, normal is bad. It's, well, abnormal.

In the words of Issue Paper #6, "we live in a society that deems heterosexuality as the norm." This is a problem, the paper's authors imply, "whether or not most of us consciously recognize it as a problem."

A problem???

I'm one of the ones that missed it. I've always thought heterosexuality was "the norm." The paper even quotes statistics that point to 90 per cent of the population being heterosexual. But now I learn that considering something shared by at least 90 per cent of the population as being "the norm," is problematic.

Pity me. The paper explains homophobia locks folks into rigid gender roles, inhibits their ability to form close relationships with members of their own sex, and limits family relationships.

On second thought; save your pity. For in spite of what the Peel District School Board would have me believe, the relational boundaries I have observed throughout my life have, I think, served me rather well.

I have loving relationships with several close male and female friends even if we're not physically intimate. As for my family, well, they love me too, in spite of my many failings; including the most recently realized one—that I'm a homophobe.

But if you're still tempted to throw rotten tomatoes, please know this; I wouldn't have any objections to you demonstrating tolerance towards me at all. No, none at all.

We're here! We're straight! Get used to it!!