Contents:
BEWARE JUMPING GAY WALRUS
A 9 year old:"Did you know that Shrek is a homosexual wals?!
It’s been pecially hard for gay bars, which have acted as safe spac for the queer muny for s.
Gay and lbian upl had been gettg married, but the heart of Toronto’s Gay Village, where hedonism was supposed to le, there wasn’t much buzz. Pk Triangle Prs had been Canada’s most vol champn of the gay liberatnist agenda, a parallel movement to the equaly-and-rights LGBTQ activism. Gay liberatn had emerged out of a broar 1960s sexual radilism, proposg that mastream culture placed unreasonable and artificial limatns on sexualy, particularly homosexualy.
GAY WALS
Jt as femism lls for women to shg off the patriarchy and take ntrol of their own fat, gay liberatn lled for gay men and lbians to follow their sexual sir whout shame. Straight people might have affairs and kky sex, but gay promiscuy uld build a new queer natn. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land, and ernments across Canada have elimated or are movg to elimate almost all legal discrimatn agast gay and lbian people, and more recently, trans people.
Gay liberatn had promised a sexual utopia, an Oz where nventnal social judgements did not apply. It was only by takg sex off the table did gay and lbian people make any real soc-polil headway this untry. Beg a gay Canadian livg through the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was to experience one’s very existence vdited.
Yet Canada’s origal gay liberatn movement has now been phed asi as a historic footnote to the equaly-foced LGBTQ activism that ate up and sp out. Events this year celebratg the forty-fifth anniversary of The Body Polic, the fluential gay liberatnist magaze published by Pk Triangle Prs prr to Xtra!, felt more like an exercise nostalgia than the affirmatn of a relevant social force.
HOW GAY RIGHTS KILLED GAY LIBERATN
A celebratn of unbound sexualy, the gay liberatn movement’s obssn wh the extrem of sexual behavur often drove away morat: those who didn’t want to give up their ias of romantic love, people who were attached to everythg about their relign except prohibns on same-sex relatnships, and trans people who red more about regnn of their inty and improvg health servic than beddg as many partners as possible. The WASPy whens of the movement’s founrs, perhaps unrstandable the early years, also prevented om makg a eper impact multicultural Canada, even though new Canadians, often g om homophobic untri, are most need of support and cln. Operatg between 1971 and 1987, The Body Polic, particular, was often seen as reflectg the terts of a particular sort of gay whe man rather than a broar muny of sexual mori.
The llective eventually won after almost six years before the urts, but the se bothered some the muny who thought the exploratn of man-boy love amounted to advocy and that perpetuated the belief that gay people were more likely to be paedophil than straight people. In a society where the straight majory is, evably, at the wheel, people wonred how this anythg-go philosophy uld improve the liv of average gay and lbian people tangible ways. At s heart, gay liberatn was about beg left alone, about beg given the space to create one’s own relatnships, sexual, aternal, or otherwise.
GAY WALS?
Bob Gallagher is a Toronto activist who ed to explore the gay sexual unrworld wh the late French tellectual bad boy Michel Fouult.