Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada

by Tom Warner

"Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada" is the first comprehensive history of its kind. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with leading gay and lesbian activists across the country and a rich array of archival material, Tom Warner chronicles and analyzes the multiple - and often conflicting - objectives of a tumultuous grassroots struggle for sexual liberation, legislated equality, and fundamental social change.

Warner presents the history of lesbian and gay liberation in a Canadian context, telling in the process the story of a remarkable movement and the people who made it happen. His history encompasses efforts to attain legislated human rights for gays and lesbians, significant regional histories, autonomous lesbian organizing, and the histories of lesbians and gays of colour, two-spirited people, and those living outside the urban mainstream of lesbian and gay life. It also recalls the crises confronting the movement: the backlash against queer activism from social conservative 'family values' campaigns, state and police harassment, and the exigencies of responding to AIDS.

Moving beyond the discussions of equality-rights campaigns, "Never Going Back" delves inside the movement to look at dissent and debates over liberation and assimilation, sexual expression, race, the age of consent, pornography, censorship, community standards, and an identity forged from a common sexual orientation.

Genres: Queer, LGBT, History, Nonfiction, Canada

480 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a long-involved activist and liberationist, Warner provides a unique and nuanced perspective on gay, lesbian, and bisexual liberation in Canada. The first section of his book, the pre-1975 period, highlights the entrenchment of homophobic and heterosexist attitudes in Canadian society. This section includes discussions on the “sin, sickness, and crime” of homosexuality: the religious moralization of homosexuality as sin, homosexuality as a threat to heterosexual, monogamous marriage, the medicalization of homosexuality, and the codification of homosexuality as a mental illness in the DSM. All of this did not stop gay and lesbian individuals from forming communities and pushing social and legal boundaries, particularly after the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada’s Criminal Code. The second section moves through the period of 1975 to 1984 and highlights the continual pushback to gay and lesbian activism, such as from Christian fundamentalists and political conservatives, as well as the internal strife faced by the movement, namely the differences between assimilationists and liberationists, such tensions also fell along gendered lines. The third section, focusing on the period between 1985 and 1999, continues to highlight the two different tracks of activism and their division around issues such as pushing for the Charter’s inclusion of protection for sexual minorities. Such division resulted largely from the dominance of middle-class, white, and “respectable” homosexuality in this period. Warner also illustrates the impact of AIDS on gay and lesbian activism, notably the increased community-building and creation of resources for those affected, in addition to new forms of homophobia. Through these three sections, Warner challenges the notion that gay and lesbian liberation ended in the 1980s and “died out” due to the achievement of equal rights and argues that the movement exists as a flexible, diverse ethos that continues to be adapted over time and place.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warner's book looks at the history of gay liberation & queer activism in Canada. It is an exhaustive study surveying all of the secondary literature on the subject.

A.m.ad engaged in consensual sexual acts in private with males…The Supreme Court, in a shocking 1967 decision, denied his appeal, agreeing with the psychiatrists’ assessment.” 46

“Parliamentary debates, harkened back to the earlier social purity movements. Previously, social conservatism, as an electoral movement, had been manifested principally in the Social Credit Party, founded a Christian fundamentalist preacher, William ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart, in Alberta in the 1930s. Outside of western Canada, it remained an essentially fringe phenomena, a form of right wing populism rooted in Christian evangelism and a bizarre philosophy that the problems of capitalism and the Great Depression on the exploitation of the international banking and credit system which, it was claimed, was controlled by a Jewish conspiracy.” 48

“There were also social networks and house parties, for those fortunate enough to gain an entree to them. John Grube, a chronicler of early Canadian gay history, has noted that, prior to 1969, homosexuals ‘had a historical culture, whether ‘underworld’ or not, with points of entry, established territories, initiation procedures, annual festivities, and ‘circles’ with leaders (“queens”). [23. John Grube, Natives and Settlers: An Ethnographic Note on Early Interaction of Older Homosexual Men with Younger Gay Liberationists (Toronto: Hawthorne Press, 1991), 119-35.] An important feature of that culture, Grube observed, ‘was its ideology about patterns of adaptation in which members of the subculture might resolve the tensions between their stigmatized status and the world at large. These patterns varied from becoming a “flaming queen” or “flaunting” homosexual to leading a double life in which one’s public status was entirely heterosexual (married, with children), while one’s private sexual outlet was known only to a few.’ [24. Ibid] While some gays were open, they tended to be artists, interior decorator, or hairdressers, or they worked in low-status jobs. Often, access to a network or social circle was gained through a mentor. Mentors were typically older men, sometimes queens, who took younger men under their wings-sometimes, but not always, in exchange for sex. [25. John Grube, “Queens and Flaming Virgins, R (March 1986), 15. Marion Foster and Kent Murray, A Not So Gay Wold (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972). Gerald Hannon, Epitaph for the Parkside,” TBP April. 1980: 1]” 51

“Lesbians generally had even fewer options. Because they were women, they could not safely be in public places, especially to seek sexual contacts. Few had jobs that allowed them to live independently, or that enabled them to afford to go to bars. Lesbian social networks did exist, of course, but were harder to find than those of gay men. Often, two, lesbians fortunate enough to find each other and become lovers would live quietly by themselves, without contact with others. If lucky, they might, over time, discover others who were like them, and forge discreet social circles.” 52

“Well into the 1970s, private parties and other social functions, such as dinners and potlucks, were the main social activities for homosexuals in cities like Edmonton and Calgary. In smaller cities that had them-and many did not-the known gay drinking spots were a contrast between skid row beverage parlous and fancier, more class-conscious cocktail loungers-the latter found in cities like London, Hamilton, Calgary, Saskatoon, or Regina.” 53

“It was not until the early 1960s that the first openly lesbian and gay themes were presented in film, theatre, art, and literature, especially in Quebec The first Canadian films dealing with gay subjects were A tout prendre, produced by Claude Jutras in 1963, and an English-language film Winter Kept Us Warm, in 1965.”54

“Until well after the Second World War, using the word “homosexual” to refer to same-sex attraction was generally limited to medical or criminal reports. Men who had an orientation towards members of their same sex did not generally use that word to identify themselves. “Queer” was more commonly heard in the wider society until the 1960s, but gays and lesbians often simply referred to themselves as being ‘that way.’ Jim Egan, who grew up in Toronto during the 1930s, recalled in an interview that even though he began ‘sexual fooling around’ with other male at puberty, he had never heard the words ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’. George Hislop, born in 1927, also remembers, ‘The word ‘faggot’ didn’t exist. We were “queers”.” 55

“Although the first gay groups did not appear in Canada until the 1960s, individuals, as early as the 1950s, nonetheless began developing analyses that rejected the era’s anti-homosexual attitudes. George Hislop recounts that politics would often be discussed at the house parties that were an important element of the social scene during this period: “I remember that, even then, the thing that bothered us most was the world’s perception of us as compared to our perception of ourselves. We knew that we had to focus our energy collectively, that we had to have some sort of organization.” 57

“Mattachine recognized how crucial was the need for a more positive gay self-identity and rejected use of ‘homosexual’, which by this time had such clinical and pathological connotations. Instead, the society coined another word, homophile, derived form the Latin philia, meaning friendship, and the Greek, philos, meaning loving. Mattachine called for unifying homosexuals, giving them a sense of belonging, and educating them and the public at large about homosexuality.” 58

“The homophone movement, progressive and groundbreaking in the 19590s and 1960s, was by the early 1970s, outdated and conservative. A revolution called gay liberation was sweeping many parts of the world, fostering a radical new consciousness and unceasing a militancy not previously seen.” 60

“A police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, on the night of 27-28 June 1969 so angered the bar’s patrons that they rioted, marking the first time the city’s gays had fought back against police harassment. Within a few days, young, militant members of Mattachine organized community meetings. The result was the formation of a new group, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), which, using a radical new rhetoric, stated one of its objectives as being to ‘examine how we [gays] are oppressed and how we oppress ourselves.’ [2] GLF’s use of ‘front,’ a word borrowed from the National Liberation Front, the Vietcong group within Vietnam engaged in a war against the United States, was deliberate.” 62

“The power of their message was such that, throughout 1969 and 1970, Gay Liberation Front groups spread to several cities across the United States, articulating a sexual-identity radicalism not seen before. Unfortunately, these groups also proved to be unstructured, generally without direction and, as a result, short-lived.” 63-64

“Shortly after the birth of lesbian and gay liberation, it became clear that establishing organizations capable of galvanizing individuals into action under the banner would be extremely difficult. Consequently, following the demise of the GLF groups, a new model for organizing emerged and spread across North America. It focused on pursuing solo gay-issue activism, primarily advocacy for legislated civil rights, solely gay-issue activism, primarily advocacy for legislated civil rights, and was first advanced by the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA), started in New York City in December 1969. GAA described itself as a ‘militant though non-violent) homosexual rights organization.’ It claimed to be ‘exclusively devoted to the liberation of homosexuals and avoids any involvement in any program of action not obviously relevant to homosexuals.” 68

“These pioneering activists realized that, in Canada, the existence of provincial human rights legislation provided political and legal frameworks within which an agenda for social change could be promoted. Advocating that sexual orientation become a prohibited ground of discrimination in such laws was a strategy that could be embraced by gays and lesbians in large urban centres and in smaller community alike. Consensus and coalitions could be built around the issue.” 70

“Toronto Gay Action member Brian Waite, one of the first to articulate the need to pursue a human rights strategy as a means of moving toward liberation, argued in 1972 that “Winning this demand [sexual orientation in the human rights code], in itself, will not end our oppression, but in the process of fighting for it many gay men and women will develop a higher level of pride and consciousness. With a victory, thousands more will find it easier to come out and begin the task of educating their find it easier to come out and begin the task of educating their fellow workers, neighbours, families and friends about the nature of homosexuality, without fear of losing a job or apartment, being harassed at school, or facing discrimination in innumerable other ways because we have no rights guaranteed by law.’ [23. A Strategy for Gay Liberation,” The Body Politic (March-April, 1972)]” 71

“But if lesbian separatism did not really take hold in Canada, lesbian autonomy did. Lesbian autonomy proceeded from recognizing the importance of building separate lesbian groups and spaces, but accepted the necessity of working with both straight feminists and gay men when the need arose.” 82

“It is striking, to say the least, to note the dramatic differences in the objectives of these first autonomous lesbian groups from those groups that were exclusively or predominantly made up of gay men. The lesbian groups have little or no priority to organizing for legislative changes, such as the amendment of human rights laws. The emergence of these autonomous groups was a reaction to overcoming the much greater difficulties that lesbians faced in coming out of the closet. They took a proactive approach to either creating meeting places where none had existed up to that point, or providing safe, comfortable alternatives to the few venues for lesbians that did exist, where they could safely and comfortably be themselves.” 83

“Activists promoting a lesbian and gay liberation perspective believed such places essentially contributed to the oppression of queers. The emerging communities, they argued, should offer alternatives that were more positive. Bars and other establishments in these cities, and their environs, became in the vernacular of lesbian and gay liberation, ‘ghettos.’ Carl Wittman summed up activist sentiments in his ‘Gay Manifesto,’ when he stated such ghettos breed exploitation and self-hatred. In the gettos, he wrote, gays ‘stagnate’ by ‘accepting the status quo,’ and ‘the status quo is rotten.’ [99. Whitman, “A Gay Manifesto,” in Out of the Closets, 339]” 90

“Toronto’s new, more upscale nightclubs provided venues for showcasing drag performers. One of Canada’s most famous female impersonators, Craig Russell, started performing in Toronto gay clubs in 1970, eventually gaining a huge following in the city and across North America. A drag troupe, the Great Imposters, starring Rusty Ryan, was founded in 1972. [105. Christopher Richards, “A Little Song, A Little Dance,” Xtra, 26 March 1998]
Outside of the bars, a system or network of drag ‘courts’ began to spread across North America. Starting originally in San Francisco, the court system was exported to other cities. The courts began holding spectacular drag balls, each of which elected an ‘Emperor’ and an ‘Empress’ regularly raising large amounts of money for community and charitable causes, The first Canadian drag court had its origins with a huge drag ball in 1971. This eventually led to the establishment of Vancouver’s Dogwood Monarchist Society and Imperial Dogwood Court.” 92

“Books dealing with the emerging lesbian and gay community and the movement for lesbian and gay rights also began to appear. The first was A Not So Gay World: Homosexuality in Canada (1971), by Marion Foster and Kent Murray-both pseudonyms. It was the first non-fiction, non-medical book on the subject of gays and lesbian in this country. Criticized by liberation activists of the day as being closeted and out of date, the book, which was based on interviews across the country, has since become a valuable history of the way things were in most of the country in the late 19609s and early 1970s. The first Canadian book indicating a gay liberation perspective, Jean LeDerff’s Homosexual? Et pourquoi pas! was published in 1973. A year later, his theoretical analysis of gay liberation, Homolibre, was released. [110. MacLeod, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada, 130]” 93

“As Bruce MacDougall states in his exhaustive study of over eight hundred court cases between 1960 and 1997, Queer Judgements: Homosexuality, Expression and the Courts in Canada, ‘there has been a remarkable persistence of general judicial attitudes toward homosexuality’ over the period.” 99

“MacDougall expounds, “despite their frequent assumption that homosexuality is unnatural and perverse, the courts at times also assume that it is contagious and must be controlled for that reason. It is seductive while still being aberrant, and, like a contagious disease, imperils the health of society. The courts act as the guardians of civilization in this respect, in inhibiting the undue spread of homosexuality.” 100

“Homophobic police, often in collusion with the media, contributed throughout the 1970s and early 1980s to a climate of backlash and bigotry.” 103-104

“As sociologist and activist Gary Kinsman stresses, the community response to the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids closed off certain options for the police and probably prevented some even bigger acts of state repression. The police could no longer conduct mass raids, and the balance of power shifted a little in favour of the gay and lesbian community: ‘The mobilization cannot be under-estimated. And I think part that also is that the police actually have been, historically, quite a central regulator of gay men’s lives, so I think that the resistance to it had this kind of popular character to it that could only really go quite far. Although the mobilization gradually dissipated, it is clear the lesbian and gay community in Toronto was forever changed by, and became more visible from, the militancy of its response and what that response came to symbolize.
CGRO’s Jim Monk, a resident of Windsor, holds similar views, and notes in addition that the massive Toronto community response was important for gays and lesbians in smaller communities.” 113

“Thus was drawn a line of demarcation between conservatives and militants, between liberationists, and assimilationists, that characterized the invariably bitter debates of the 1970s and early 1980s.” 121

“Following groups led by Schlafly and Bryant, anti-feminist women in Canada created REAL Women (Realistic, Equal, Active for Life) in 1983. It believes the ‘family is the most important unit in Canadian society,’ the fragmentation of which ‘is one of the major causes of disorder in society today.” 135

“Her [Anita Bryant] presence galvanized the lesbian and gay communities in these cities. A demonstration in Peterborough to protest her visit in April was the first for gays and lesbians in that city…Shortly after these events, Bryant’s Save Our Children collapsed, but her allies in Canada remained active, basking in the attention her visits generated and forming themselves into various groups and ‘crusades’ aimed at generation a public backlash against lesbian and gay rights.” 137

“In early 1978, when sentencing the men found guilty of murdering Jacques, the presiding judge, in an act of appalling bigotry, stated, ‘There are those who would seek legal protection for homosexuals in the Human Rights Code. You make me wonder if they are misguided. I wonder if there shouldn’t be legislation to protect the people you seek to entice.’ [14. Robin Hardy, “Judge Slams Gays in Jacques verdict,” TBP (April 1978): 4] The linkage of the murder with efforts to amend the code was also made by conservative politicians and, astonished, by the head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.” 137-138

“A spillover from the U.S. media, the fear of gay power followed a CBS TV documentary, ‘Gay Power, Gay Politics’ [April 26, 1980] that focused on San Francisco’s lesbian and gay community, profiling Harvey Milk, the one openly gay member of the city council there. Canadian media picked up on the CBS story, speculating whether Toronto was becoming ‘San Francisco North.’ [18. Ed Jackson, “Media Raise Fear of Undo Gay Power as Sewell Endorses Hislop Campaign,” TBP (Oct.1980): 10]” 138

“The events of 1980 and 1981 marked the arrival of in Canada of a fully fledged family values movement that by then had flexed its muscles in the United States. In October 1982, Ken Campbell allied himself directly with the U.S. family values forces. He invited Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell to speak at the first of a series of national crusades to ‘liberate the oppressed,’ such as ‘women, children (born and unborn), and victims of drug abuse, alcohol or sexual disorientation.” 140

“The most famous of the discrimination cases involved John Damien. For eleven long years, his struggle to gain reinstatement to the Ontario Racing Commission as a racing steward was a compelling example of why sexual orientation amendments were needed.” 144

“There, the Coalition for Rights in Ontario (CGRO) formed in January 1975 to coordinate province wide advocacy efforts in the face of a belligerently anti-gay Progressive Conservative government. Almost immediately, three significant events propelled the Human Rights Code amendment issue into the public spotlight: John Damien was fired as a racing steward; the Human Rights Code Review Committee was established to advise the government on amending the code; and, a provincial election was held. All events were used by CGRO to generate publicity for and public awareness regarding an amendment.” 150

[hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly elegant and engaging writing. poignantly drops bar after bar with seemingly minimal effort yet maximal insight