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Not as Gay as it Gets!
Contrary to Tourism Toronto’s advertising campaigns, Toronto’s not all that gay-friendly, at least according to Amherst College political science professor Javier Corrales. In his recent article, The Gay-Friendliness Index of World Cities [PDF], Corrales ranks Toronto forty-fourth, as we apparently only have sixty gay-friendly businesses and four gay-friendly organizations. Obviously, these numbers are absurd; Toronto has hundreds of gay-friendly businesses and organizations (just take a look at the business listings on gaytoronto.com). In fact, according to Ric Tremaine, media spokesman for the Gay Toronto Tourism Guild, whether a business is gay-friendly or not really isn’t an issue in Toronto anymore, as almost every business is. “Money is the driver,” and businesses, explained Tremaine, “have become gay for pay.”
Corrales, who claims that his report “presents the first-ever index of “gay-friendliness” of world cities,” only consulted one source to make his list: Spartacus International, a gay-friendly tourist publication from Germany, with little to no commercial interest in Toronto (or much of the rest of the world). In Corrales’ defense, his article focuses on Latin America, not Toronto, but that’s still not an excuse for sloppy research.