Well, it’s been a long time coming. For decades Toronto has been a destination for gays throughout the world. They flock to our little village year after year to celebrate Pride, walk hand in hand with their loved ones and to, well, you know. But the one thing about our world famous gay village that’s always annoyed me is how “un gay” our street is! Year after year, through tourist after tourist, our beloved village has has been the least gay thing about the LGBT community! Drab building after drab building have lined our gay strip, keeping the makers of monotonic paint hues farting through silk. Our dark buildings have always been overshadowed by less gay neighbourhoods, like Newfoundland’s multicoloured Jelly Bean Row for instance: every colour in the proverbial rainbow is slapped on houses in St. John’s and yet Church Street has remain dark and drab for years…until now! Enter the Rainbow! Thanks to the recent appearance of Pizzaiolo and their bright red facade their neighbour, the newest club on the strip – Flash followed suit with passionate purple! Not to be out done, the venerable Sailors gave themselves a much needed facelift as well! Okay, a new coat of paint but it’s bright blue and gorgeous! Finally colour on the gayest strip in Canada! Hopefully the rest of the businesses will follow suit. Rainbow it up people!

Amidst all the hoopla and outrage about Proposition 8, I stumbled across an article on BBC about a new character coming to the venerable British soap EastEnders. The show’s producers have announced they are adding a new gay character (pictured). Now, at first blush this wouldn’t seem like such a big deal, many daytime and nighttime dramas and comedies have openly gay characters. What caught my eye was that this new character is Muslim.

Naturally, gay groups in London are lauding this new character as being a breakthrough saying it helps to show that London is an ethnically and culturally diverse city. Queer Muslim groups are thrilled to have representation on a mainstream show while a spokesperson for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee feels the Muslim community deserves better representation than a gay Muslim character considering there is so much Islamophobia in Britain and around the world. At least it’s being discussed.

This story got me thinking that there is so little racial diversity in the queer community. With the media all over the Prop 8 story and images of queers on the Internet, news and daily papers, you’d think that most gay people are white. It’s something I’ve noticed in the gay community for years. The advertising, postering, imagery, iconography mainly features white men. Occasionally you’ll see a Black man or a young Asian guy, but not very often. Where’s the rainbow?

As global as we are (hey, there are queers everywhere, right?), we are very myopic when it comes to racial diversity – especially in North America. Do we even consider for a moment that there are queer Muslims or Hindus or Inuit? It may pass through our consciousness on occasion but not too often. Just look at the advertising for bars, nightclubs, events, web sites, chat rooms et al and see how often they diverge from the archetypal muscular white guy 18 to 35 years old.

We wave the Rainbow flag.
Let’s start showing more colour!

Here in Toronto’s gay Mecca: Church Street, you see very little ethnic diversity. I think it’s time our community does more to reach out to non-White queers. I think it’s time our businesses break the mold with their advertising. Imagine a poster for a bar, club or event that had a couple of sexy Sikhs or hot Hindus? Imagine if they were over 40! Ok, one thing at a time.

Our community is represented by a Rainbow flag. It’s time we started showing more colour.