BREAKING Monthly earnings rise, payroll employment falls: jobs report
The number of vacant jobs in Canada increased in February, while monthly payroll employment decreased in food services, manufacturing, and retail trade, among other sectors.
LGBTQ2S+ Pride commemorations that sometimes have felt like victory parties for civil rights gains are now grappling with an environment of ramped-up legislative and rhetorical battles over sexual orientation and gender identity, and fears that a Supreme Court ruling on abortion opens the door to rights being taken away.
Big crowds are expected Sunday at Pride events in New York City and a range of other places including San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and Toronto, in a return to large, in-person events after two years of pandemic-induced restrictions.
Like every year, the celebrations are expected to be exuberant and festive. But for many, they will also carry a renewed sense of urgency and concern.
"There are so many anti-LGBTQ2S+attacks going on around the country, and a lot of them are really about trying to erase our existence and to make us invisible, and to make our young people invisible and our elders invisible," said Michael Adams, CEO of SAGE, which advocates for LGBTQ elders.
Extremists have taken an increasingly hostile stance toward Pride events, including plotting an attack against a march in Idaho, while Conservative state governments has proposed and in some cases passed a slew of anti-LGBTQ2S+legislation.
Another blow came Friday, when the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturned a nationwide right to abortion in an upending of a long-established legal standard that has people wondering whether same-sex marriage might be next.
The majority decision claimed it was solely about abortion, but in his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said other cases should be looked at again, including the one that made same-sex marriage legal.
In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law barring teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, which critics decried as an effort to marginalize LGBTQ2S+ people and lambasted as the "Don't Say Gay" law.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, like DeSantis a Republican, sent a letter to state health agencies in February saying that it would be child abuse under state law for transgender youth to get gender-affirming medical care. A judge has halted full implementation of any parental prosecutions.
Protest has always been an element of New York City's Pride Parade, which roughly coincides with the anniversary of the beginning of the June 28, 1969, Stonewall uprising – days of angry demonstrations sparked by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.
Marchers in the 1980s protested a lack of government attention to the AIDS epidemic.
In recent years, though, they've often been celebrations of major victories for LGBTQ2S+ communities to celebrate, like in 2015 when the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell v. Hodges decision recognizing same-sex marriage.
That's not this year, though.
"This year, we have seen an onslaught of aggressively hostile anti-LGBTQ2S+ bills in many state legislatures, and more of them have passed than last year," said Jennifer Pizer, law and policy director for Lambda Legal.
It brings home a reality that in addition to celebration, there's still a need for activism, said Joe Negrelli, 70, a longtime NYC Pride attendee, who was worried about marriage equality.
"Could it be overturned? Yes, I do believe that. It is a conceivability," he said of the court's decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. It "makes me want to put more energy into engaging in marching."
Anyone who might have been "lulled into a false sense of security" by previous civil rights victories "has been woken up now," Adams said. "I think a lot of us who understand the history of the struggle for equality and equity and social justice in this country know that the fight is never over."
It's not just legislation and court decisions. Those who track hate speech say anti-LGBTQ2S+ language has increased online, which raises the fear that extremists will take it as a call to engage in action, like the rash of protests and physical interruptions that have taken place at Drag Queen Story Hours, where adults in drag read books to children.
Earlier this month, 31 members of a white supremacist group, carrying riot gear, were arrested over accusations that they were plotting a major disruption at a Pride event in Idaho.
That doesn't mean the celebration's over, advocates said.
"There can be celebration and joy, and also purpose in protest," Pizer said.
Ellen Ensig-Brodsky, 89, has embraced both those roles in her decades of attending Pride as a LGBTQ2S+ rights activist.
"The parade is the display, publicly, of my identity and my group that I have been part of for at least 40 or more years," she said, adding that she will be marching again Sunday. "I certainly would not want to miss it."
After all this time, the animosity and hostility she's seeing around the country aren't unfamiliar to her.
"The intent to increase anti-LGBTQ2S+ existence is a return to what I started out with" decades ago, she said. Back then, "we didn't come out. We hid."
Not now, she said, "I think we need to show that love can persist and continue and spread."
The number of vacant jobs in Canada increased in February, while monthly payroll employment decreased in food services, manufacturing, and retail trade, among other sectors.
The Canadian Medical Association asserts the Liberals' proposed changes to capital gains taxation will put doctors' retirement savings in jeopardy, but some financial experts insist incorporated professionals are not as doomed as they say they are.
A West Virginia father is getting some sense of closure after authorities found the remains of his young daughter and her mother following a deathbed confession from the man believed to have fatally shot them nearly two decades ago.
For centuries, people have wondered what, if anything, might be lurking beneath the surface of Loch Ness in Scotland. When Canadian couple Parry Malm and Shannon Wiseman visited the Scottish highlands earlier this month with their two children, they didn’t expect to become part of the mystery.
Recent injected drugs like Wegovy and its predecessor, the diabetes medication Ozempic, are reshaping the health and fitness industries.
Two military horses that bolted and ran miles through the streets of London after being spooked by construction noise and tossing their riders were in a serious condition and required operations, a British government official said Thursday.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
It's no secret that spring can be a tumultuous time for Canadian weather, and as an unseasonably mild El Nino winter gives way to summer, there's bound to be a few swings in temperature that seem out of the ordinary. From Ontario to the Atlantic, though, this week is about to feel a little erratic.
The oldest living former major leaguer, Art Schallock turns 100 on Thursday and is being celebrated in the Bay Area and beyond as the milestone approaches.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.