OPPRESSION AND CRIMINALIZATION

The main barriers to greater freedom of gender and sexual expression, identity, and practice were social and cultural oppression and legal regimes aimed at criminalizing LGBTQ+ people.

For generations, oppression (or persecution) of LGBTQ+ people often worked informally in modes of social interaction, everyday speech, and cultural forms.

These, in turn, had the effect of marginalizing and repressing (or restraining) LGBTQ+ people, compelling them to remain “closeted” and severely limiting their right to fulfilling and safe lives.

Criminalization targeted specifically sex acts and forms of interaction associated with homosexuality.

These laws were heavily laden with religious-cultural assumptions and a later pseudo-scientific theory about what constituted “normal” human sexual relationships.

An infamous case of the application of the Victorian law banning same-sex practices was the 1895 criminal prosecution of the brilliant British writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) (pictured, slide 8) for “sodomy and gross indecency” after he had failed in an ill-advised libel case he brought against the influential Marquis of Queensbury.

Such attitudes and legal proscriptions were not merely “Victorian”: mid-twentieth century psychological theory attempted to add a “scientific” dimension to these presuppositions.

During the Cold War (1946-1991), an era of massive demographic expansion in the West, “pop psychology” – in books, articles, radio, and T.V. – heavily emphasized heteronormativity.

THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The post-WWII gay-rights movement in the western world was the watershed moment leading to the gradual relaxing of social and cultural attitudes, the repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality, and the extension of civil liberties to LGBTQ+ people.

By the 1960s and 1970s, most politically open countries witnessed efforts to extend civil rights to LGBTQ+ people.

A significant milestone was the Stonewall riots in New York City in June 1969 (see image, slide 17).

The Stonewall riots resulted from a police raid on an illegal gay bar, The Stonewall Inn.

The raid and arrests prompted an organized movement focused on decriminalization and led to annual Gay Pride parades and the coordination of resistance movements across the LGBTQ+ communities.

The late-1970s and early-1980s featured an open backlash against gay culture.

In media, this backlash included the rejection of artistic forms associated with the gay community, such as disco music, which emerged from an urban dance club scene.

LGBTQ+ RIGHTS IN CANADA

The expansion of LGBTQ+ rights in Canada is traceable to the late 1960s.

Initiated in 1967 and passed in 1969, a Criminal Code amendment spearheaded by then-justice minister Pierre Trudeau decriminalized private homosexual acts in Canada between two consenting adults 21 years of age or older (note the limitations here).

The section dealing with homosexuality was based on the U.K.’s Sexual Offences.

Act (1967).

For its part, it was only in 2003 that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned all existing state anti-sodomy laws.

The quip is often pointed to as an example of Pierre Trudeau’s gift for off-the-cuff witticisms. Still, it speaks to a deeper issue of relevance to this course – namely, the degree to which human rights sensibilities had come to inform policy-making by the 1960s.

The criminal code amendment did not end legal hostility to same-sex practice in Canada, merely its expression.

Public same-sex activity remained proscribed under the law.

On 5 February 1981, for example, 250 to 300 men were arrested during police raids at four gay bathhouses in Toronto – an event known as “Canada’s Stonewall” (see image, slide 25).

The crucial context for the legal expansion of LGBTQ+ rights in Canada was

the post-Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) period.

Significant gains in the Charter era realized in the political and legal spheres highlighted the realities of daily discrimination, harassment, and emotional, psychological, and physical abuse LGBTQ+ people faced.

LGBTQ+ RIGHTS IN CANADA These early gains included:

!The 1992 lifting of the ban on homosexuals serving in the military

!Bill C-33 (1996), which included "sexual orientation" in the Canadian Human Rights Act (1977) in the wake of a Canadian court of appeal decision in 1992

In 2005 Bill C-38, a federal measure giving same-sex couples the legal right to marry received royal assent and became law.

Provincial governments, led by B.C. and later Ontario, pushed for legalizing gay marriage. In contrast, Alberta’s Conservative government vowed to block any federal legislation with the notwithstanding clause (CRF s.33).

A 2004 Supreme Court reference decision found that Parliament can lawfully change the gendered definition of marriage but did not offer an opinion on whether the Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires it.