[PHOTO] Three Toronto Pride Photos

What the subject line says.

The OPSEU building at Pride
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Local 555 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (31 Wellesley Street East) is decked out in the appropriate colours.

"You spin me round"
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

What dance party--a party that brought me to, incidentally--would be complete without a disco ball?

Random Partiers
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I have no idea who these people are or why they wanted me to take a photo of them, but whatever.

[BRIEF NOTE] Two Rainbow Flags

When I visited the Inti Raymi Festival last weekend in Christie Pits park, I was very surprised to see the Rainbow flag proudly displayed.

The Andean Rainbow Flag
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

It turns out that the Incan flag and the gay pride flag actually look quite a lot alike.

The Gay Pride Rainbow Flag
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Go figure.

[LINK] "How gay is your neighbourhood?"

In the Sunday Star, Isabel Teotonio and Patrick Cain wrote about the ways in which Toronto's GLBT community was diffusing beyond the urban core, as judged by the number of same-sex marriages.

Date, sex and partial postal code data for same-sex couples married in Toronto was released to the Star recently under access-to-information laws. The information goes back to June 2003, when same-sex marriage was legalized.

The data, current to last month, covers 11,128 individuals; a little fewer than half were American and a handful were British.

The postal code data sheds light on different neighbourhood patterns of Toronto's own married lesbians and gay men.

Gay couples are most common in the Gay Village around Church and Wellesley Sts. and in east downtown, with clusters in Rosedale and the University of Toronto area.

Lesbians are also prominent downtown, with clusters in east-end neighbourhoods such as Riverdale, South Riverdale, Leslieville, the Beach and east Danforth. Rates are also high in the U of T area, Cabbagetown and Roncesvalles.

Generally, socioeconomic factors explain why lesbian and gay enclaves form in different areas, says sociologist Adam Green, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Because women typically earn less, lesbian enclaves appear in less wealthy areas and farther from main streets. Gay men, who are bigger earners, are traditionally more visible downtown, says Green.

Even when it comes to socializing, lesbians are less visible, he says, pointing out that gay men tend to mingle at bars and bathhouses, whereas women often gather at private parties and events.

While two women living together are likely to have lower incomes than a pair of men, professor David Rayside warns economics may not entirely explain the clustering.

The Toronto Star's Map of the Week blog has more statistics, chronicling the number of marriages over time.

[BRIEF NOTE] An unconstitutional democratic coup on Honduras?

The background to the ongoing Honduran coup sounds surprisingly well-managed.

The Honduran Congress late Sunday officially voted Mr. Zelaya out of office, replacing him with the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, who said Monday that he would resist pressure from other nations demanding the reinstatement of the ousted president, news agencies reported.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the last senior member of the administration to visit Honduras, just three weeks ago, said that the United States was working toward “full restoration of democratic order in Honduras.”

She said that the situation in Honduras “has evolved into a coup.” But when pressed by a reporter, she refused to say explicitly that the United States was demanding that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power, although senior administration officials pointed out that the United States had signed on to an Organization of American States statement on Sunday that included such a demand.

[. . . ]

Mr. Zelaya, 56, a rancher who often appears in cowboy boots and a western hat, has the support of labor unions and the poor. But he is a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and the middle class and the wealthy business community fear he wants to introduce Mr. Chávez’s brand of socialist populism into the country, one of Latin America’s poorest. His term was to end in January.

The Honduran military offered no public explanation for its actions, but the country’s Supreme Court issued a statement saying that the military had acted to defend the law against “those who had publicly spoken out and acted against the Constitution’s provisions.”

Mr. Zelaya’s ouster capped a showdown with other branches of government over his efforts to lift presidential term limits in a referendum that was to have taken place Sunday. Critics said the vote was part of an illegal attempt by Mr. Zelaya to defy the Constitution’s limit of a single four-year term for the president.

Early this month, the Supreme Court declared the referendum unconstitutional, and Congress followed suit last week. In the last few weeks, supporters and opponents of the president have held competing demonstrations. The prosecutor’s office and the electoral tribunal issued orders for the referendum ballots to be confiscated, but on Thursday, Mr. Zelaya led a group of protesters to an air force base and seized the ballots.

Well-managed at first glance, though. As Noel Maurer notes, there doesn't seem to be any constitutional basis for what happened.

Article 205, Section 12: [Congress has the power to] accept the constitutional oath of office of the elected President and Vice-president of the republic, and other appointees they select; grant them permissions and accept or reject thier resignations and fill vacancies in the case of the complete absence of one of them;

Article 205, Section 20: [Congress has the power to] approve or disapprove the admistrative conduct of the executive branch;

Article 242: In the case of a temporary absence of the the President of the Republic, the Vice-president will carry out the functions of the President. Should the Presidency be permanently vacant, the Vice-president will exercise the powers of the executive branch for the remainder of the constitutional term. Should the Vice-presidency also be vacant, the powers of the executive branch will be exercised by the president of the National Congress.

Thus, the need to declare that President Zelaya had “resigned” before giving the executive powers over to Roberto Micheletti. (The office of Vice-president is currently vacant, so having the power pass to Micheletti is kosher ... it's the whole removing of Zelaya what appears to be illegal.) Note that while Micheletti says that everything is constitutional, this article from the Honduran press cites no clauses or precedents.

Did I mention that Venezuela mobilized its military? Not that it can do anything, but still ...

This will be interesting to watch.

[LINK] "Waiting for the penny to drop"

Over at Spacing Toronto, John Loring takes a look at the short- and long-term consequences of the federal government's refusal to help fund the TTC's purchase of new streetcars.

With the death of "the ask," the Conservative world-view emerged triumphant: municipal transit expenditure is appropriately funded by local taxpayers under the patriarchal guidance of the province. If Ottawa wants to get involved, it can and will, but those are strictly political calls. As for the City of Toronto’s special relationship with the federal government (a fantasy encouraged by Paul Martin), well, don’t even go there.

There was also an element of three-card monte in council’s hasty attempt to make the best of John Baird’s proffered olive branch. The TTC shuffled back some of its capital spending projects to make room for the streetcar buy, while city officials scoured the 2009 capital budget for quick-turnover projects that might pass muster with guardians of the Harper government’s fiscal stimulus package. The fairly explicit message from the mayor and city bureaucrats on Friday was that it’s all going to be a wash.

[. . .]

Think about this story from Baird’s perspective: the City of Toronto, invoking its own exceptionalism, decides to flout federal funding guidelines, is then forced to back down, but gets a second chance. Outside Toronto, the Tories will receive no love for that magnanimous gesture. And inside Toronto, well, they still look and act like a party that has no traction with 416 voters.

Does anyone in the Harper inner sanctum think that giving Miller $400 million in infrastructure funding will buy them a riding or two in the next election? Of course not.

Go, read.