Demanding Possibilities: The Legacies and Potentials of Sex and Gender Activism

Abstract

The rain that poured down on gay activist Charlie Hill, speaking on steps of Parliament Hill in Ottawa on 28 August 1971, did nothing to cool and dampen heat of his political rhetoric.1 In his speech, Hill described how Canadian lesbians and gay men were fed up with lack of dignity, discrimination, harass- ment, arrests, and the genocide of gays fostered by psychiatrists using medieval tor- tures to destroy us (quoted in Moldenhauer 1971, 4). Hill had come to Ottawa to take in a demonstration in support of We Demand, a brief submitted to Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Toronto Gay Action 1971). The We Demand demonstrations that took place in both Ottawa and Vancouver marked first significant organized public protest relating to same-sex sexuality in Canada (Smith 1999, 3).What galvanized these specific protests was a critical response to passage of Criminal Law Amendment Act. This vast law reform omnibus bill, undertaken by Liberal government in 1968-69, among other things decriminalized sexual activ- ity in private between two persons over 21 years old, and legalized abortions under very strict and paternalistic conditions. As scholar and activist Gary Kinsman mem- orably notes, these reforms were part of a broader process of reclassifying homo- sexuals, prostitutes, juvenile 'sex offenders,' and women seeking abortions as 'sick' or 'inadequate,' but no longer as necessarily (1999, 165). Unsatisfied with narrow liberalization of Criminal Code, a coalition of groups that included Vancouver-based Gay Alliance Toward Equity, Toronto Gay Action (TGA), Com- munity Homophile Association Toronto (CHAT), and Montreal's Front de liberation homosexuel drew dramatic attention to continued discriminatory language of Criminal Code and a range of other policies of Canadian state.Written by two members of activist and liberationist group Toronto Gay Action, Herb Spiers and David Newcome, We Demand utilized liberationist rhetoric while articulating a reformist political agenda. Although TGA was of an emergent radical sexual liberationist movement, one that would most famously find its voice in Toronto-based periodical Body Politic, brief itself was designed for broad political appeal that would be palatable to more cautious and reformist allies such as those in CHAT, as TGA's minutes of 11 July 1971 reveal. As such, most of demands focussed not on subjective or community-based forms of sexual liberation, expression, and consciousness, but rather on law reform and regulatory policies of Cana- dian government. Some of listed demands included removal of vague terms such as gross indecency and indecent act from Criminal Code (1953-54, s. 149, s. 158) and specification of illegal acts, adoption of a uniform age of consent, amendments to Immigration Act (1952) to remove references to homosexuality, right to serve in armed forces, and end to discrimination in employment by federal government and monitoring of homosexual employees within federal government (Toronto Gay Action 1971).All of these demands for change were significant, in no small because a great deal of same-sex sexuality in Canada-sexual acts, zones of sexual contact, forms of sexual expression and representation-remained illegal, or at best lay within a grey zone of criminality. For example, sex between more than two persons, even if these activities took place in privacy of a home, remained illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. Trudeau's famous statement that There's no place for State in bedrooms of nation (CBC 1967) had presumptive limits about what constituted legitimate sexual activity within bedrooms of Canadians. Implicit in Trudeau's statement were a range of assumptions about privacy and bedrooms that privileged individuals who were able to secure, control, and regulate their own domestic space. …