https://socialistaction.org/2017/12/15/trudeaus-defective-apology-to-lgbtq-people/
Trudeau’s defective apology to LGBTQ people
/ 3 days ago
Marie-Curtis-Park-protest
2016 protest in Marie Curtis Park. Photo by Declan Keogh / Toronto NOW.
By JOHN WILSON
— TORONTO — Some (mostly) good news for a change! Arising out of the
effective resistance to a police campaign of anti-queer harassment, and
arrests in Toronto’s Marie Curtis Park, all contested charges have been
dropped. [In 2016, at least 78 people were entrapped by plainclothes
officers, who tried to lure LGBTQ people to proposition them for sex.]
The victory is the result of strong local community organizing in the
area, a development that likely would not have been possible even in the
recent past. This suggests the growth of self-confidence and willingness
to act in the public arena on the part of the local LGBTQ community and
allies, which is really encouraging.
The other victory is in the federal arena: Prime Minister Trudeau’s
apology for the decades-long vicious campaign by the RCMP and the
military to eliminate gays and lesbians from the civil service and the
armed forces. Between the 1950s and the 1990s, the Canadian state
conducted widespread spying against queer people, firing numerous people
simply on the basis of their sexuality, tried to intimidate them into
giving information on others, destroying careers and lives along the
way. (There were suicides that resulted from this witch-hunt.)
While Trudeau’s apology is fairly wide-ranging, it is also defective and
lacks honesty. He attributes this atrocity to “the thinking of the
time.” This was a deliberate and calculated policy orchestrated by the
highest levels of the federal state. And the apology is the result of
decades of protest organized by queer activists and their allies, not
the implied generosity of the government.
Money has been allocated to compensate people grievously harmed by this
campaign. But it is too late for many. And if compensation is handled
the same way as it has been in the case of the atrocity of residential
schools, people will wait a long time to see any money.
The promised expunging of criminal records involving consensual sex does
NOT include convictions for violating the medieval bawdy house laws
under which hundreds were arrested, as in the infamous Toronto bathhouse
raids.
So, while the apology is a victory for queer communities, it is not an
unqualified one, and major issues have not been addressed. Among these
is the ongoing prohibition of gay men donating blood and the continuing
criminalization of HIV. The struggle continues.
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December 15, 2017 in Canada, LGBT rights.
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