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With Toronto's 31st annual Pride Parade fast approaching, the legacy of last year's controversial attempted banning of the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from the Parade continues to resonate today. [...]

ABSTRACTOmar Khadr, the Canadian teen accused of war crimes in Afghanistan in 2002, was the only minor held in Guantanamo Bay until his repatriation to Canada in 2012. Throughout his 13 years in U.S. detention and Canadian prison, Khadr remained a highly debated and contentious figure in the Canadian public, depicted as both a victim and villain through the circulation of his dual image as an adolescent boy alongside his photograph as a bearded adult. Although evidence was never presented to the Canadian public that Khadr was a threat to Canada’s national security, his treatment by the federal government and his framing in Canadian news media depicted Khadr as a terrorist. Looking at the relationship between the circulation of Khadr’s dual image and representations of him as a victim/villain, this paper argues that discourses of national security, the construction of dangerous masculinity in the racialization of Arabs and Muslims, and the affects of fear and anxiety circulating in the perceived threat of terror and terrorism shaped a contradictory representation of Khadr as a terrorist threat to the nation, and conversely, as a victim whose innocence relied on his status as a child.

The article focuses on the review of the attempted ban of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) at the Pride Parade in May 21, 2010 in Toronto, Ontario. The city councillors, mayoral candidates and corporate donors of the Parade objects the participation of the QuAIA in the Parade by putting the Pride funding at risk. The ban was lifted due to the opposition from the local queer and trans community.