“The first step is just more basic tolerance”
Former teacher Eric Smith looks back at when he was shunned from the community and looks to the present to see what's changed
Having a gay friend or family member doesn’t mean anything. It does not in any way mean you have any concept of what it is like to live as gay or transgender in a community that doesn’t support you. Eric Smith
Eric Smith sat quietly with a handful of pride flags as he watched the proceedings of the April 11 meeting of Barrington Municipal Council. On the agenda was the sale of the former visitor information center to a private Christian academy. The potential sale drew opposition from the community at a public hearing on March 28 for a number of reasons, including what many considered to be anti-LGBTQ beliefs outlined in the academy's Statement of Faith. The offer to purchase the property has subsequently been withdrawn.
For Smith, the experience brought back memories from 35 years ago when he was a teacher at Clark's Harbour Elementary School and his HIV status became public knowledge. There was much public outcry.
“It quickly turned into an anti-gay crusade,” says Smith. “This council didn't help matters either. Instead of speaking up for its gay citizens, it thought the best idea was to ask the provincial government to ban not only gay teachers, but gay students from school as well. While the proposal didn't get too far, it helped send a message to those members of the gay community living in the area.”
Smith says after 35 years it would be nice to think people are more aware of what's going on, but the March 28 public hearing left him feeling some on council don't really have the concept of what it's like to be gay.
“The warden mentioned it was choice,” says Smith. “It's soul draining.”
At that hearing the warden had said, “I have several cousins that choose to be gay too, and I respect them and love them just as much…" He then quickly apologized and corrected himself to say, "Or that are gay, I'm sorry. That are gay," while at the same time a speaker was correcting him by saying, "They were probably born that way."
Smith says medical science determined at least 50 years ago that sexual orientation is not a choice.
“It is no more a choice than is being heterosexual. Does it even make sense to think that people choose to be gay or transgender considering the struggle, harassment, hate and violence they face?”
Some of the conversation and language used at the public hearing were also concerning, says Smith, adding there seemed to be some discomfort about the language that should be used when referring to the gay community.
“I listened carefully for the use of everyday terms like gay, LGBTQ or queer community but noticed they didn't really get used. Many members of the gay community actually dislike the word homosexual," he says. "The word itself was invented in the late 1800s to describe a mental health defect. It was removed from the list of mental health disorders by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973."
Smith says he identifies as queer and his preferred pronouns are he/him.
“I use the word queer to reclaim a word that has so often been used to harm us. It covers a widely diverse community of orientations and gender identities and is much easier to say than 2SLGBTTQQIAAP+.”
Smith says he knew he was different before he started school. “Back then but didn't have any language for it. By the time I was in Grade 4 or 5, I started to understand the difference because most of the boys in my class were interested in the skirts of little girls. I was more interested in the boys.”
By the time Smith was 12 or 13 years old, after reading a book in the school library, he says he knew why he was different.
Smith says he was privileged as a queer youth.
“In the early 1970's both my
parents told me they knew I was queer. My sisters were always supportive. I was never made to feel that there was something wrong with me," he says. "I was extremely lucky as most queer youth at that time did not find that acceptance. So many of them had to hide who they were or were kicked out of their homes. I will be forever grateful that my family provided me with a safe space which so many of my contemporaries never had."
Smith notes he was “also concerned by the tokenism that was floating around the discussion last month."
"Having a gay friend or family member doesn't mean anything. It does not in any way mean you have any concept of what it is like to live as gay or transgender in a community that doesn't support you. It fits in with the idea of someone not looking gay. What does that even mean?”
Smith says several simple steps could be done in the Municipality of Barrington to make LGBTQ citizens feel more accepted by the community and would be symbolic of some support.
“The first step is just more basic tolerance,” he says, noting for the past few years the Pride Flag has been raised at a special purpose flag pole in the municipality, and every year it is torn down.
“Even something as simple as raising the flag upsets people,” says Smith. “It doesn't seem to be a problem in other parts of the province where many area's local government actually support and take part in recognizing Pride Month.”
The municipality could also implement an inclusivity policy and could issue a proclamation for Pride Month like many municipal units do at a flag-raising ceremony.
“These kind of policies could be very general,” says Smith. “I realize Barrington is nowhere near having a pride parade or anything like that.”
Ironically, it was in part because of the actions of the local school board and the Barrington municipal council of the day that the first pride parade in Halifax in 1988 was organized.
“It's fair to say that the anti-gay stance taken by this council helped lead to the queer community organizing to fight for equality rights,” Smith says.
The early pride parades were marches in protest of the way the LGBTQ community was treated. “The first march had around 75 participants, several of whom wore paper bags over their heads from fear of getting fired,” Smith says. Now the Pride Parade attracts around 120,000 spectators and includes 10 to 12 days of celebrations. “I am proud that I have walked in all of the marches since the first in 1988,” says Smith.
Smith says he has always found other areas of the province more accepting of the gay community. In the four or five years he spent fighting for his teaching job in the 1980s, there were times he feared for his own safety.
At the time, AIDS had been around for six or seven years but wasn't an issue people in rural areas and small towns were really paying attention to, Smith says.
“When I tested positive my family doctor in Barrington said I'm still willing to treat you as a patient, but said he didn't know much about AIDS because he didn't think it would be an issue in the Barrington area for 10 years. So even the local doctors hadn't been paying much attention to the AIDS issue. They thought it was a big city disease.”
Smith says a key thing to remember is the people in the Barrington area "were trying to understand it."
"It was an immediate problem for them, but in the rest of the province people could look at the issue in a calm manner. It was easy to listen to what the medical people were saying, where for people down here it was an immediate issue for them.”
Smith later ended up serving on the Nova Scotia Task Force on AIDS and has been an advocate for gay rights ever since. He says it took a relatively short time span to get total equality rights for most members of the gay community — “From 1988 when we had no legal protections until 2004 when the
N.S. Supreme Court ruled in favour of same sex-marriage," he says.
"By the time the federal government's same sex marriage legislation became law (July, 20, 2005), courts in eight provinces and one territory had already declared marriage equality legal in those jurisdictions. It has taken longer to deal with some of the issues around transgender equality. However, the fight continues and progress is being made. All jurisdictions in Canada now allow for the changing of gender markers on government issued documents.”
Smith, who lives in Halifax and is on a disability pension, says even after 35 years every August he still gets the feeling he should be getting ready for the classroom and the return to school.
“Before I started school, I knew I wanted to be a school teacher, but it ended up being a different form of education and was that type of education nobody was doing at the time.”
Smith says although attitudes towards the LGBTQ community are changing over time, it's difficult to realize there are certain things that are ongoing.