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This is an article that I don’t want to write, because I firmly believe the questions I’m asking will reveal to us just how — I’m not sure if the word I want to put here is “indifferent,” which is much more socially kind that saying “bigoted” — we can be as people.
Yes, we North Americans, so quick to bomb the shit out of other cultures if they trigger our righteous indignation.
On Facebook, there have been various campaigns that were kicked off by ordinary people creating a program that allowed you to alter your profile picture with a certain flag to show your solidarity with certain global events or groups of people. An example: you could show your solidarity with the victims of the Paris attacks on November 15, 2015, by super-imposing a French flag over your profile picture on Facebook.
So there was solidarity shown on more than just one front. Global support for the victims quickly spread as French nationals and ex-pats gathered around French embassies across the globe to denounce ISIS who claimed responsibility for the attacks.
And those of us who were unwilling or unable to make it to their respective French embassies turned to social media — with the same fervor as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to be seen and heard.
Various hashtags found their way onto Twitter, for example #JeSuisParis appeared, in reference to January’s #JeSuisCharlie.
But not to be outdone by Twitter, Facebook allowed its users to superimpose the French flag over their profile picture as a solidarity gesture. And it caught on.
As Americans debated the definition and implications of legalizing same-sex marriage, this triggered cheers from across the globe for America to “do the right thing” — and anyone, regardless of their nationality that had a Facebook account could put a rainbow flag filter over their profile picture to show their support for same-sex rights and for the citizens of America.
It was a media sensation, Facebook draped in a rainbow flag. But looking back upon it now, I’m not sure how many Canadians really cared what Americans voted for as long as we looked like the good guys.
How pro-same sex marriage were we as a nation? Judging by how many Canadians had a rainbow flag as their profile picture in 2015, we were every tea-party drinking, right-wing cookie baking, homeschooling mother’s worst nightmare. But eventually, the novelty of the righteous indignation wore off, and the rainbow solidarity was gone.
But then the mass shootings in Orlando happened, and when it seemed the world needed Canada to care again about civil rights and terrorism, for whatever reason, because of the state of our own economy or the prospects of our new Prime Minister, even we stopped caring about the moral supremacy of LGTBQ rights, and life itself.
And the only thing that that’s keeping the world from knowing the truth about how little we care about the LGBTQ community in America is that a few Torontonians have again placed a rainbow filter over their profile picture on their Facebook accounts. But not nearly enough.
Thank god for Pride Toronto to hide our shame and hypocrisy.
But it’s not just us who had displayed that rainbow flag and considered it a perfectly good measure of people’s support for gay rights issues.
I certainly could not have been the only one who noticed just how colourful people’s Facebook profiles had become back then, so as a test, I’ve asked that very question on Facebook, so my friends and those who just like my journalism, will both be able to respond.
I mean, especially since our Pride is on display so close to the date of that awful Orlando shooting, perhaps I thought that we would be on the vanguard of this issue once again.
Perhaps I’m just being a bit paranoid, no…sentimental?
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