Pride Month got off to a chaotic start on Sunday when dozens of anti-Israel protesters affiliated with the Philadelphia chapter of Queers4Palestine clashed with revelers in the City of Brotherly Love, blocking the parade procession through the city’s historic Gayborhood.

The surreal scene was a physical embodiment of the absurdity of shoehorning calls for the “liberation” of Palestine, arguably one of the world’s most socially regressive societies, into a pre-packaged social and ecological justice agenda fashionable with leftists in the United States and other first-world countries. The chaos in Philadelphia also hints at turbulence to come as Pride season ramps up here in Canada.