Forty years ago, on Aug. 28, Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»members of what we now are civilized enough to identify as the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities made Canadian history. On the steps of the building that now houses the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Art Gallery, a handful of 20 courageous demonstrators issued what may have been one of the first open calls for gay rights in Canada. Their West Coast rally was coordinated with a larger gathering in Ottawa that brought the same demands to the doors of Parliament. Their demands called for an end to government job discrimination, use of government power to change public attitudes toward gay people and equal rights on all fronts for gay Canadians.
Late last month, Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hosted an academic conference, sponsored by the Canadian Committee on the History of Sexuality, designed to mark the demonstrations anniversary and to assess the state of gay rights and activism in Canada today. Perhaps not surprising, the aptly named straight media gave this conference very little coverage.
For some observers still mired in the tar pits of superstitious homophobia and hatred, such a conference will seem like a sinful, terrifying outrage. For others who assume that the battle for a diverse, tolerant Canada has been fought and won, it will seem like yesterdays news. But neither of those positions holds up to a bit of thought.
The rancorous mutterings of those family values zealots who are sure they have absolute clarity about Heavens will about whom one is allowed to love can be safely ignored as the superstitious, hateful nonsense they are, and even a brief examination of current events will persuade the fair-minded observer that establishing full and respected citizenship for GLBT Canadians is still a work in progress. Now is not the time to give up the fight.
Thanks to the brave pioneers who staged those 1971 demonstrations and four decades of hard political slogging, many of the demands for gay rights have been achieved. Like women and racialized minorities, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities have made huge, but still partial strides toward equality before the law in the last four decades.
Not all the goals of any of these oppressed groups have been achieved. All continue to face bias, economic discrimination and violence. Homophobic bullying can still drive queer youth to depression and suicide in schools and homes across the nation, and as recently as 2008, Stats Canada reported a troubling upsurge in Metro Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hate crimes that targeted gay victims. That year the number of such attacks in the region, 34, represented the highest per capita rate for anti-gay violence in Canada, during a year in which national numbers for such attacks more than doubled, sparking widespread media discussion of whether Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»was the gay-bashing capital of Canada.
And if you want to dismiss the Stats Can numbers by suggesting that they reflect an increase in reporting rather than an increase in attacks, or to suggest they are already stale dated, take a look at recent UBC research that shows gay men in B.C. are still subject to discrimination when they seek housing. According to the research, published this month in the journal Social Problems, gay male couples applying to rent a dwelling in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»are 25 per cent more likely to be denied rental access than heterosexual pairs. Just imagine trying to find housing in the citys already daunting market and having to conduct that search knowing that a landlord is likely to deny you housing simply on the basis of your sexual orientation, despite laws and regulations that make such discrimination illegal.
Clearly, we have not yet done the work of public education and law enforcement necessary to make anti-gay discrimination a thing of the past. The We Demand demonstrators of 1971 made a good beginning, and it is up to us to finish their valiant work.
