Arnold Zwicky's Blog

… and the season is Pride Month. Canadian Pride and Canadian pride from Chris Ambidge on Facebook on 6/1:

Oh look — Canada Post is issuing four commemorative stamps in honour of Pride Month. The theme is “Places of Pride / Lieux de la fierté”, and depict four places beloved of LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada, from Hanlan’s Point in Toronto to Club Carousel, Calgary’s first gay bar. I hadn’t seen these last time I was at the post office — I need to go buy me some stamps!

(#1) From the Canada Post website on 5/29:

We’re proud to announce our latest stamp series honouring sites across Canada that 2SLGBTQIA+ [2S is two-spirit, a First Nations term for a third gender] people fought to make their own – places of celebration and freedom to be fully oneself, and spaces that nurtured a sense of solidarity that became a catalyst for change. 🏳️‍🌈

The Places of Pride stamp series honours: Calgary’s first gay bar Club Carousel; Toronto’s Hanlan’s Point Beach; Montreal gay bar Truxx; 3rd North American Native Gay & Lesbian Gathering near Beausejour, Manitoba.

O Canada! … The True North strong and free! — we send Prideful huzzahs to you.

Things are different, stamp-wise, in my troubled country.

Here in the land of Lord Grabpussy, there are no stamps recognizing Pride or featuring the rainbow flag; LOVE stamps and stamps honoring James Baldwin (with the National Postal Museum recognizing Baldwin’s importance as a writer about both the Black experience and the gay experience) and Harvey Milk (with a bar of the 6 flag colors) are as close as we’ve gotten:

(#2) The stamp was issued 7/33/04

(#3) From the 5/2/14 press release about this stamp:

The First-Day-Issue dedication ceremony for the Harvey Milk Forever Stamp took place at the [Barack Obama] White House today.

“Let this stamp remind us of the fundamental truth behind Mr. Milk’s message — that we all have a stake in equality,” said Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman in dedicating the stamp. “Let this stamp inspire a new generation to continue Harvey Milk’s legacy — to keep working toward a world where prejudice gives way to acceptance, where division gives way to unity, and where fear gives way to hope.”

In the current state of the government here, I would imagine that if Washington could find to way to have all existing Harvey Milk stamps destroyed, it would do so. Things were not sunny even back in 2014; from my 9/9/14 posting “LGBT stamp year” (k.d. lang in Canada, Harvey Milk in the US):

In the case of the Milk stamp, the rabidly anti-gay American Family Association advised people to:

1. Refuse to accept the Harvey Milk stamp if offered by your local post office. Instead, ask for a stamp of the United States flag.

2. Refuse to accept mail at your home or business if it is postmarked with the Harvey Milk stamp. Simply write “Return to Sender” on the envelope and tell your postman you won’t accept it.

But the political climate now is profoundly antipathetic to lgbt+ folk; everything that smacks of diversity, equality, or inclusion is to be scrubbed from public life.

The obvious candidate for another Pride hero on a US stamp would be Bayard Rustin; my 9/2/23 posting “Labor Gay” has an extended section on the man. And in fact there’s a Bayard Rustin Coalition (“standing for Black LGBT empowerment since 2006”) site mounting a “Bayard Rustin National Stamp Campaign”:

CALL TO ACTION: Celebrate the Life and Legacy of Bayard Rustin!

Let the United States Postal Service know that you want them to honor our unsung Black American hero. Sign on to this letter [below] or copy and paste it by using the text version below.

Encourage the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee to support a postage stamp honoring Bayard Rustin.

In the current climate, this campaign has the proverbial snowball’s chance of getting anywhere.

Instead, we can probably expect to see a call to issue a stamp honoring Anita Bryant. From my 5/25/19 posting “Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin”, in a section on throwing food as a symbol of protest:

(#4) Florida orange juice spokesperson and vituperative anti-gay campaigner Anita Bryant cleaning up after getting a cream pie in the face from a gay rights activist in 1977

I would pay a chunk of cash for stamps with this image, but I’d imagine that our overlords would choose a more flattering photo of the bitch.

This entry was posted on June 4, 2025 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Art, Canada, Gender and sexuality, Race and ethnicity, Rainbow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.