Ottawa should take pride in its diversity and support a unified community rather than ghettoizing gays in the name of perceived safety and acceptance.
The GLBTQ community’s demand that the city use its Bank Street redevelopment plan to create a recognizable gay village on Bank Street between Laurier and Gladstone avenues sends the message that Ottawa isn’t an open and accepting community. If gays do not feel safe or welcome on the streets of Ottawa that needs to be addressed — but isolation into one “safe” gaybourhood is not the solution. Rather the underlying issues of homophobia and hate-crime must be tackled.
The argument of seeking safety in numbers in the proposed neighbourhood is well intentioned but illogical. Bank Street will never be exclusively, or even mostly gay. No one can force out current residents and not all Ottawa gays can live in that area. The choice of neighbourhood is also up for question. Why this area? There are only a handful of businesses on Bank that specifically cater to the gay community and while all businesses may be gay-friendly that does not make the neighbourhood unique in Ottawa. With no firm boundaries set, how can a stretch of street become a community? The dream of becoming a gay neighbourhood like Vancouver’s West End or Toronto’s Church Street is unrealistic, given the size and layout of Ottawa.
The GLBTQ community strives for equality and acceptance. They are our neighbours, our friends and our family. Ottawa is strengthened by its cultural, linguistic and sexual diversity. Ghettoizing parts of the community does not celebrate this strength but rather presents it as a weakness, a cause of fracture, not unity. Ethnic communities such as Chinatown and Little Italy serve the purpose in preserving a culture. A neighbourhood based on sexual identity is not the same thing. It won’t preserve a culture under threat.
To segregate and suggest a special neighbourhood is needed is actually a step backwards in the quest for equality. It implies — rather frighteningly — that residents of different sexual orientations cannot happily co-exist in the same neighbourhood.
It is important to note that a neighbourhood that has organically grown into the undisputed centre of a city’s GLBTQ community is different from the proposal here in Centretown. Forcing a “gay neighbourhood” down the throats of Bank Street residents and businesses will not create the community envisioned. Ottawa’s envy of gay neighbourhoods in other cities cannot be cured by installing some rainbow benches and flags and labelling a street.
Most disconcertingly, the terms of the debate over a gaybourhood make any business or resident who takes a stand against the ridiculous proposals for pink curbs and rainbow arches appear homophobic.
Acceptance in the Ottawa community should not be measured by willingness to create a special street or block of businesses, but rather in pervasive equality and welcome throughout the city. The gaybourhood only serve will make gays living far from the Bank Street rainbow shangri-la feel like outsiders.
—Anne McEwen