The Ontario NDP's White Flag

On Drag Queens And The Politics Of Losing

On Tuesday, the provincial NDP announced a bill that would, if passed, extend the concept of “community safety” zones, aka the no-protest limits, that the Ontario Liberals previously passed to protect abortion clinics, to venues known to host drag shows. It’s not clear what the criteria for those venues are, whether a gay bar which doesn’t host performances counts as one, but what we do know is there’s a $25000 fine attached to breaking the 100 metre limit to protest – if passed, which seems unlikely.

Given that the press conference was specifically pitched at stopping abuse being shouted at drag performers, I doubt that it’s actually systemic protection for the broader community. In fact, I’ll be blunt – conflating drag performers and the broader queer community is deeply offensive as someone in the community – but this bill is a crock of shit. It’s a massive violation of civil liberties for no discernible public purpose, to solve a problem that mostly seems imported from the States.

Yes, a few people at the press conference had anecdotes of people protesting, but here’s the thing – we live in an open society, and unfortunately, your right to earn an income does not mean a right to earn an income free from criticism or protest. I write about sports (and soon again, political) betting for TheLines, and I am aware of the fact that what I get paid to write about is controversial and a subject that a lot of people oppose. I can’t magic that away just because I happen to think that prohibition of sports betting was a massive failure.

But this isn’t the point that’s really worth making – although, to be very clear, if you actually care about protecting queer communities then you should be proposing these anti-protest zones at gay bars and not just places where Drag shows happen and not just trying to make political hay out of an American culture war. What is worth empathizing is that this shit isn’t good electoral politics, and if you actually care about protecting communities, this isn’t the way to go – and it seems clear the Ontario NDP doesn’t understand it.

…

The fundamental truth about what elected Doug Ford – unlike what the Ontario Chief Electoral Officer might want to blame on polling – is that the NDP and Liberals ran shit campaigns in 2022. A lot of my Del Duca optimism in the first three months of 2022 was based on the idea that he’d run maybe not a good campaign, but a mediocre one at least, and that the NDP would run a bad one. That second basic theory was right, but the Liberals ran such a bad campaign that the NDP ended up in decent shape in seats (but not in votes).

Given that Ford won in large part because of staggering incompetence on the part of the opposition – incompetence that so far hasn’t been fixed, as Ford’s deteriorating personal ratings but the PCs’ still-existent poll lead this week shows – the question has to be what can the opposition do to beat him. And frankly, picking up on a story with almost no cultural pickup in Canada and elevating it as a priority is about as bad a way to win the middle as you can choose.

Democrats just won a staggering, massive, landslide victory in an important election last night in Wisconsin – ostensibly a race for the state’s Supreme Court, it was a partisan race in all but name that Democrats won by 11 points in a state Biden won by less than 1%. Between this and the midterms, where Democrats held the Senate and gained a seat despite the historical Midterm penalty, we have clear evidence that focusing on issues outside the mainstream doesn’t work. Yes, obviously the GOP overturning abortion rights rapidly hurt the GOP, but it’s also the case that their incessant trans panic bullshit has no electoral constituency amongst voters who they actually need.

In the same way that Republicans pay a price for trying to make people care about issues that nobody does, the NDP in Ontario fail to win elections because they’re seen as incompetents and unserious – and even under Andrea Horwath, they were seen as not up for the job. The fact that Horwath could only get 33% in 2018, and then the second the Liberals got rid of Wynne it was the Liberals, and not the NDP, that rode the pre-COVID polling wave of anti-Ford anger is pathetic – but they held Official Opposition so nobody cares.

The problem is, this is the kind of progressive politics that elected Ford and (if the Federal Liberals were stupid enough to indulge it) would elect Poilievre. Anyone who knows me knows that one of the first things I wrote for this site was a piece entitled Being Gay In Straight Spaces, a meditation on homosexuality, sports, and the battle of, well, being gay in predominantly straight spaces. It’s a quandary I’ve thought about for 15 years now, since I first realized I was gay.

I would love a more forceful, maximalist culture, especially on issues of gay rights. I would love the NHL to say, given their recent controversies on players not wanting to wear Pride jerseys (or, in the case of Ilya Samsonov, a Pride decal on his helmet) that if you don’t wear the jersey or the decal you’re suspended for 10 games or fined a million dollars or whatever, but I know that wouldn’t actually solve anything. The problem for many progressives is that they view politics and political parties as ways to feel better about themselves, and this is that sort of politics in a nutshell.

Will the policy actually meaningfully reduce hate against the queer community? No, fuck no, because as someone who has faced homophobia, queer spaces aren’t where it happens. In my experience, the places where I’ve been where I’ve suffered from homophobic abuse have been in the middle of downtown Ottawa or online. Is this bill an encroachment on civil liberties? Of course – that’s the point of it.

You know who used to hate bills like that? Progressives, back when the state of Texas – and 12 others – had bans on homosexual sex on the books until 2003. Did those laws actually stop gay men from having sex? No, but what they did was make conservatives feel better at the cost of a massive civil liberties violation. Just because there’s now a majority for our cultural morality doesn’t mean governments legislating where we can say airquotes unacceptable views is now okay.

We know what wins in modern society from the centre and left – a libertarian social policy, support for climate action, and a healthy dose of economic redistribution. That’s what Trudeau did, it’s what Biden has done legislatively, and it’s what got Albo elected in Australia. What the Ontario NDP is proposing is a politics of making people feel better while not actually solving any problems. It’s unserious, it’s offensive, and it’s beneath contempt.