Capital Pride & the Gay Purge in Canada
Capital Pride wrapped up with the Pride Parade just yesterday in Ottawa. It was a great turn-out, however a number of companies, public institutions, and the current governing political party dropped from participating in Pride over a statement released by the organizers condemning the 'Pink-washing' of the war in Gaza and expressing solidarity with Palestinians. In this context I thought it would be worth sharing a bit of history on Capital Pride and its connection to the Gay Purge.
In the 17the century, European colonists brought with them to Turtle Island a view of same-sex relations as "sinful" and an idealization of chastity based on certain Biblical interpretations. This view remained fairly consistent in European ontology until the 19th century, when sexuality began to be studied from the perspective of medical science. Rather than being viewed as a sin, same-sex attraction began to be treated as a "mental disorder," and would be classified as such in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1973. This idea of same-sex attraction as a "mental disorder" also took root in Canada, and it became further stigmatized as a "security concern" in the context of the Cold War.
The Canadian federal government authorized in 1948 the investigative powers of a Security Panel that would report directly to Cabinet. The Security Panel deliberately targeted "homosexuals" as a "national security threat" because this "character weakness" supposedly left same-sex attracted persons open to blackmail by Soviet agents—this laid the groundwork for what would become known as 'the Gay Purge.' More than 9,000 Canadians were spied on, interrogated, and ultimately purged from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), the RCMP federal police, and the federal public service between the 1950s to the mid 1990s.
The Security Panel also mandated research on "the detection of homosexuals" that relied on the same assumption of same-sex attraction as a mental disorder. This directly led to the Security Panel approving in 1961 Professor F.R. Wake of Carleton University's development of the infamous 'Fruit Machine.' For four years Wake's team of psychiatrists and psychologists, and the departments of National Defence and Health & Welfare, used the machine to intrusively interrogate suspected queer members of the CAF , but were ultimately unable to make the machine reliably work (due in part to a lack of queer persons volunteering to act as control subjects. Also because it was based on faulty pseudo-science).
At the same time as the Purge was being carried out, there was a greater effort by the Canadian government to criminalize same-sex attraction and identity. Legislative changes in 1952 prevented "homosexuals" from immigrating to Canada due to "security concerns." The following year "buggery" and "gross indecency" were added as triggering offenses to the Canadian Criminal Code. In 1961 the Dangerous Sexual Offender legislation made consensual same-sex relations grounds for indefinite detention by the police. However, the Canadian queer community pushed back.
It began with the 1971 'We Demand' rally in Ottawa—the first large scale gay rights demonstration in the country—which included amongst their demands: that the RCMP disclose whether that had been spying on queer people working in the government, and to allow same-sex attracted persons to work in the military. The 'We Demand' rally is the reason why Pride is celebrated in August in Ottawa, rather than June. In 1985, Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect, which provided protection from discrimination on various grounds—including sexual orientation. In 1990, Military Police Officer Michelle Douglas, released from the CAF the year prior as a result of the Purge, took the federal government to court on the grounds of breaching her Charter rights under Sec(15). She won a settlement that saw the policy of discrimination against same-sex attracted persons in the CAF revoked.
By 2003 most Canadian provinces and territories had legalized same-sex marriage, and in June 2005 the Civil Marriage Act extended this right to all Canadians. Despite these accomplishments the work of the 2SLGBTQIA+ movement in Canada is not done. For example, the legal protection of transgender persons continues to be inadequate—see for instance the Alberta government's recent "Parental Rights" bill which has been criticized for endangering trans youth. Pride, including Capital Pride in Ottawa, has always been about solidarity and resistance to authorities that would suppress it. This is what enabled the movement to push back and ultimately overcome the Purge; it did not need the companies, the public institutions, nor the political parties 53 years ago—it does not need them now.
The Security Panel may be disbanded, the Fruit Machine dismantled, and the legal grounds for discrimination dismissed, but the struggle for equality continues until everyone is safe to freely live and express their identities as they are.
Sources:
Introduction to the History of the Queer Movement. Cyndia Cole, Val Innes, & Ellen Woodsworth. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45136196
"Character Weakness" and "Fruit Machines": Towards an Analysis of the Anti-Homosexual Security Campaign in the Canadian Civil Service. Gary Kinsman. (Note: a major scholar in this field, see also his book with Patrizia Gentile from UBC press: The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation).
For more info on the Gay Purge in Canada, highly recommend Sarah Fodey's Canadian Screen Awards nominated documentary, The Fruit Machine, available on YouTube (TW: addresses experiences of homophobia, biphobia, SA.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dLEn0h4hJI
