Only one day into the Liberal government’s newly proclaimed “Pride Season,” and renowned psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has already had enough.
“Pride is not a festival of love. It’s a festival of pride. That’s why it’s called Pride,” Peterson said on X. “And now it’s a bloody season. Not a parade. Not a day. Not a week. Not a month. A season.”
He called the event, which has been transformed to encompass almost the entire summer, a “celebration of casual hedonistic, self-centred sex,” which he distinguishes from love.
He said despite the stated values of the movement, “Pride” doesn’t include those who are not part of the “bloody rainbow brigade” or those who are “sensible enough to keep their private lives private.”
Further, he criticized the government’s incessant financial support and promotion of the movement and celebrations.
“The government has absolutely no business involving itself in any of this,” Peterson said. “Even Justin Trudeau’s almost equally reprehensible father said and so famously, ‘There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.’”
“Enough bloody pride. Enough pride in the banks. Enough pride in the churches. Enough rainbows on the streets,” he continued. “Enough of whatever the hell that flag purports to be.”
Peterson questioned who makes the decisions that lead governments and activists to incorporate whatever variant of the ever-evolving Pride flag, or as Peterson called it, the “demented rag,” is flown.
“Who decides where and when it flies, and why? Some secret cabal of dog-mask-wearing S and M aficionados and moralists?” he said. “And enough of the ever-extending idiot acronym that only the propagandized insiders can even remember.”
According to the Canadian government website, It has currently settled on the acronym being 2SLGBTQI+. The 2S stands for Two-Spirited, for people who “identify” as having both a masculine and feminine spirit but is exclusive to Indigenous people, the L for Lesbian, G for Gay, B is Bisexual, T is Transgender, Q for Queer, the I is Intersex and the plus encompasses everything else.
The gay rights movement, which began as a fight for the rights of gay people to love whomever they want, now includes “aromantic” people who don’t want to romantically love anyone, which the government distinguishes from sexual preferences.
Peterson aimed at what he called “the ‘gender-affirming’ butchers and liars,” who advocate for life-altering transgender procedures for children and adults.
He also noted an apparent divide among those the government and activists would call the 2SLGBTQI+ “community,” particularly among gays and lesbians.
“There’s no coalition at all on the LGBTETC, much less a ‘community.’ There is instead an internal battle there that is far worse than anything the LG types faced back when the only thing they had to worry about was Christian conservatism,” Peterson said. “At least no one was being castrated or subjected to unnecessary mastectomies in those bad old days.”
In an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast, Peterson expressed his opposition to the Pride movement in another way.
“The words pride. That’s the word that was chosen, and it’s pride in relationship, as far as I can tell, to nothing but hedonistic self-gratification. It’s like your identity is going to be your sexual desire? That’s your identity? Your sexual desire?” he said on the show. “That means you’ve reduced your identity to the most immature and hedonistic part of you, the part that would exploit someone else for your gratification, for example, the part that would exploit you for your gratification.”
He said it’s that very identity that Western society is now being called to celebrate. Peterson thinks that is a “very bad idea.”
True North contacted Pride Toronto and PFlag Canada to respond to Peterson’s arguments but did not receive a response before the deadline.