TRUE NORTH STRONG AND GAY: 50 YEARS OF LOVE AND STRUGGLE
To mark the 50th anniversary of Bill C-150—which amended Canada’s Criminal Code and represented a significant step forward for gay rights— Maclean’s looks back on five indelible images from the past five decades, each of which highlights a key moment for the LGBQ community. (You may note a ‘T’ is missing from that familiar acronym. While the 1969 relaxing of prohibitions included expressions of sexuality, it didn’t extend to gender identity, and did little to improve issues faced by trans people.)
I was born in 1961, less than seven years before Canada decriminalized homosexuality. But growing up, I was just my natural self and didn’t even know the categories of gay or lesbian. Then, when I was 17, I came out to my mother. My older sister and brother are also gay, so I’ve been comfortable with it my whole life. And in a very, very small town like the one I lived in, you actually get to fully embrace your eccentricities and personality because there aren’t enough people for there to be cliques.
I’ve also had the good fortune of growing up in progressive Canada, with gay marriage being sort of the pinnacle of the movement— we were the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage nationally. And day-to-day acceptance on the street has been incredibly progressive since I came out.
Fortunately, I haven’t experienced any blatant discrimination, but I do believe my sexuality has limited my radio success. When my single The Mind of Love was released, I heard that a lot of advertisers called radio stations to say they didn’t want to hear a girl singing about a girl. My sexuality has also worked the other way, though. I don’t think Ingénue would have been so successful if Vanity Fair hadn’t come out in 1993 with Herb Ritts’s amazing cover photo of me in a barber’s chair and Cindy Crawford holding a razor.
I suppose things like that have had an impact. It brings me joy to think that I might have helped someone find their path. Acceptance is a chain, and if I’m one link in the chain, that’s a pretty beautiful thing to be.
But I am troubled by the rise of socially conservative politicians. Jason Kenney has talked about constricting gay-straight alliances in schools, and now his government has cancelled the group planning a ban on conversion therapy in Alberta. So there’s still a lot of work to be done to eradicate the tendency to use LGBTQ2 issues to polarize people, which is so easy to do. It’s much harder to have an unemotional conversation and really try to work through our differences.
The pendulum swings back and forth. But I urge the LGBTQ2 community not to cede to the hatred out there, to live with a compassionate heart and be educators of people. As a certain artist sang, “Even through the darkest phase / Be it thick or thin / Always someone marches brave.”