Tag Archives: Canada

Gay History - May 15: Alexander The Great, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Canada Legalizes Gay Sex as Stonewall Begins to Simmer

Gay History – May 15: Alexander The Great, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, and Canada Legalizes Gay Sex as Stonewall Begins to Simmer.

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 356 BC – Alexander the Great is born in Macedonia. One of the greatest conquering generals of all time.\

Alexander’s love of Hephaistion is well accepted as factual history. Upon Hephaistion’s death in battle. Alexander was overwhelmed by his grief for Hephaestion, so much that Arrian records that Alexander “flung himself on the body of his friend and lay there nearly all day long in tears, and refused to be parted from him until he was dragged away by force by his Companions.. As historian Andrew Chugg states, “It is surely incredible that Alexander’s reaction to Hephaestion’s death could indicate anything other than the closest relationship imaginable.”

Alexander’s most controversial relationship was with a handsome young Persian eunuch named Bagoas. At a festival of athletics and arts in a town called Salmus (after Alexander returned from India) Bagoas won a prize. After Bagoas picked up his prize, he walked across a theatre and seated himself beside the king. The Macedonians in the theatre applauded loudly and shouted for Alexander to kiss the winner. At last, the king put his arms around Bagoas and kissed him.

Some historians have denied that the episode even took place, but there is no good reason to question its historicity.

 1897 – The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, (Wissenschaftlich-Humanitres Komitee) was founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, Germany to campaign for social recognition of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender men and women, and against their legal persecution. The committee after 36 years was dissolved in 1933 when the Nazis destroyed the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin where the WhK was based.

Fortunately Hirschfeld had left Germany for a speaking tour that took him around the world as his Institute burned; he never returned to Germany.

1969 – Canada decriminalizes private same-sex acts.

In 1969, Canada’s sodomy and gross indecency laws were amended following public outrage over the conviction and sentencing of Everett George Klippert for homosexuality. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968–69 added an exemption to the Criminal Code that made such acts legal under certain circumstances. The individuals involved had to be consenting adults of at least 21 years of age, and the act could only be conducted in private. Sodomy and gross indecency remained illegal outside the house or if three or more individuals were involved or present.

In America it’s a different story

1977 – CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcasts a segment on child pornography, concentrating on “adult homosexuals who prey on small boys.”  As a result, teenagers from a conservative New York Catholic high school go on a gay bashing spree, beating one victim to death. They are later sentenced to 35 and 40 years in prison.

Unfortunately, the 60 Minutes episode has been lost. Or perhaps actually it is fortunate.

Gay History - February 9th: Irish Poet Brendan Behan, Archie Bunker's Gay Buddy, and Jerry Falwell Outs A Teletubby

Gay History – February 9: Irish Poet Brendan Behan, Archie Bunker’s Gay Buddy, and Jerry Falwell Outs A Teletubby

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February 9th.

1874 – Amy Lowell American lesbian poet was born in Brookline. Massachusetts.

A militant literary leader she thumbed her nose at the Boston Brahmans who raised her and outed herself. Her lover was actress Ada Dwyer Russell whom she called “Peter.” Russell is reputed to be the subject of Lowell’s more erotic works, most notably the love poems contained in ‘Two Speak Together’, a subsection of Pictures of the Floating World.  The two women traveled to England together, where Lowell met Ezra Pound, who at once became a major influence and a major critic of her work. Pound considered Lowell’s embrace of Imagism to be a kind of hi-jacking of the movement, and among his friends he referred to her as the “hippo-poetess”, because of her large body size. Lowell has been linked romantically to writer Mercedes de Acosta, but the only evidence of any contact between them is a brief correspondence about a planned memorial for Duse. Lowell was a short but imposing figure who kept her hair in a bun and wore a pince-nez.

1923 – Brendan Behan is born.  

Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish.  Born in Dublin into a republican family, he became a member of the IRA’s youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. However, there was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from a tender age. Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to him serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom (see “The Borstal Boy” ) and was also imprisoned in Republic of Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara and also resided in Paris for a period.   Behan had married Beatrice Salkeld  in 1955. A daughter, Blanaid, was born in 1963.  This however, was not enough to bring Behan back from his alcoholic abyss. By early March 1964, the end was in sight. Collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar, he was transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died, aged 41.

The family of Brendan Behan claim that he was bisexual all of his life, but he kept it quiet for his families sake.

1943 – Marc Stevens 

Marc ’10½’ Stevens was a pioneering bisexual  sex industry figure during the 1970’s in New York City. He appeared in over 80 pornographic movies, and he also led an erotic dance troupe and performed in live sex shows. While he predominantly appeared in heterosexual films and loops, he made a number of gay movies as well. He was a close associate of leading sex industry figures such as Jason & Tina Russell, Annie Sprinkle, who was also his neighbor for a time, Sharon Mitchell, Jamie Gillis, Georgina Spelvin and Gloria Leonard. Tall and lean with a well-defined musculature, he had the nickname “10½” because of the size of his rather large circumcised penis

Stevens passed away of AIDS in 1989 at age 46

Continue reading Gay History – February 9: Irish Poet Brendan Behan, Archie Bunker’s Gay Buddy, and Jerry Falwell Outs A Teletubby →

Canada’s Stonewall – February 5, 1981: Toronto’s Brutal “Operation Soap” Bathhouse Raids, Over 300 Gay Men Arrested

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On February 5th, 1981 more than 200 plainclothes police officers raided four Toronto bathhouses leading to the largest mass arrest since the October Crisis ten years earlier. In total, 289 gay men were charged with being “found-ins of a bawdyhouse” and two were charged with “buggery”.

Men speaking out in the aftermath of the raids described severe misconduct on the part of the police. Some reported being photographed naked, others said police took down their employers’ names and phone numbers and several men stated that police had referred to them as “queers, faggots and fairies”. Moreover, one man reported that several officers used sledgehammers and crowbars with abandon, smashing windows and breaking down doors. This last fact is corroborated by the $38,000 in damages reported by the four bathhouses after the raid (nearly $175,000 in 2020 dollars). In contrast, the police report stated that the officers behaved in a “professional manner.”

A documentary on the bathhouse raids and the ensuing protests quotes Duncan McLaren, one of the men who was charged as a found-in at the Barracks bathhouse.

McLaren describes his victimization by the police:

“We ended up in the shower room and we were all told to strip… But I think one of the most chilling things was… one of the cops said, looking at all the showers and the pipes going into the shower room; he said ‘Gee, it’s too bad we can’t hook this up to gas’.

Continue reading Canada’s Stonewall – February 5, 1981: Toronto’s Brutal “Operation Soap” Bathhouse Raids, Over 300 Gay Men Arrested →

Today In Gay History: January 5th. – Feminist Lesbians and the Body Politic & Pink Triangle Press

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The Body Politic (magazine) - Wikipedia

January 5, 1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first female governor inaugurated in the U.S. She may not have been a lesbian, but she was one of the first feminists to gain political office.

January 5, 1977 – The Lesbian Organization of Toronto moves to new center at 342 Jarvis Street, sharing with feminist publication The Other Woman and coffeehouse called Three of Cups.

January 5, 1978 – In 1971 Pink Triangle Press, as we know it today, is born as The Body Politic Collective.

In 1978 the Toronto Police brought charges against The Body Politic/Pink Triangle Press (which is still in existance today and specializes in LGBT media including publishing, online interactive media, and television and the LGBT magazine, Xtra! ) was charged with “publishing immoral, indecent and scurrilous material” because of an issue of The Body Politic which included Gerald Hannon‘s article “Men Loving Boys Loving Men” under Criminal Code section 159 (“possession of obscene material for distribution”) and section 164 (“use of the mails for purpose of transmitting anything that is indecent, immoral or scurrilous”).

Four years later The Body Politic/Pink Triangle Press was brought up on similar charges again in May 1982, this time for “Lust With a Very Proper Stranger”, an article on fisting.

The Body Politic/Pink Triangle Press fought both charges and eventually won

In 1987 The 135th, and final, issue of The Body Politic is released in February.  The new publication Xtra  is released adapting to changing times and the void left by The Body Politic, the paper becomes increasingly politicized. Xtra becomes a place for discussion about the defeat of Ontario NDP Bill 167, criminalization of HIV/AIDS, and the censorship struggles of Vancouver’s Little Sister’s and Toronto’s Glad Day queer bookstores.

The Body Politic: a magazine for gay liberation; #69, December, 1980/January, 1981; Smile! You're on TV! by The Collective and Tim McCaskell, David Mole, Gary Ostrom, Leo Casey, Martha Fleming, Michael Lynch,

Historicist: I Sing The Body Politic

Gay History Month Halloween Edition – October 31: Happy Birthday Baby Jane, Toronto’s Mass Gay Bashings, and Silent Film Star Ramon Novarro Murdered With A Lead Jeweled Dildo?

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October 31st.  

1962:  Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, opens in theaters. Happy Birthday Blanche and Jane!

Produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, about an aging actress who holds her paraplegic sister captive in an old Hollywood mansion. The screenplay by Lukas Heller is based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell. Upon the film’s release, it was met with widespread critical and box office acclaim and was later nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one for Best Costume Design, Black and White.

The intensely bitter Hollywood feud and rivalry between the film’s two stars, Davis and Crawford, made the filming of the movie a living hell but  was heavily important to the film’s initial success. This in part led to the revitalization of the then-waning careers of the two stars. In the years after release, critics continued to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy, camp, and creation of the psycho-biddy subgenre.

Bette looked down on Crawford as a shallow “mannequin” with eyebrows like “African caterpillars” whilst she was a serious, theatre-trained performer. She also called into question Joan’s reputation with the opposite sex, or as she put it “She slept with every male star at MGM, except Lassie.”

Crawford was no kinder “Poor Bette,” she tutted “she looks like she’s never had a happy day, or night, in her life.”

Their claws continued to be out for one another for the remainder of their days, until Joan was the first to pass away from a heart attack. The tragedy did nothing to diminish Davis’ acid tongue; “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good…Joan Crawford is dead..Good.”

1968 : Silent film star Ramon Novarro’s body was found after being brutally murdered. A bathroom mirror had the words “US GIRLS ARE BETTER THAN FAGGITS” written upon it.

Novarro a Mexican film, stage and television actor began his career in silent films era in 1917 and eventually became a leading man and one of the top box office attractions of the 1920’s and early 1930’s.  He was promoted by MGM as a “Latin lover” and became known as a sex symbol after the death of his friend (and fuck buddy) Rudolph Valentino.

Novarro was troubled all his life by his conflicted feelings toward his Roman Catholic religion and his homosexuality. His life-long struggle with alcoholism is often traced to these issues. Once MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer reportedly tried to coerce Novarro into a “lavender marriage”, which he refused.  Navarro was romantically involved with journalist Herbert Howe, who was also his publicist in the late 1920’s.

Novarro was murdered in the late evening of October 30, 1968, by brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson, aged 22 and 17, two hustlers whom he had hired from an agency to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex. According to the prosecution in the murder case, the two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro’s house. The brothers of tortured  Novarro for several hours trying to force him to reveal where the non-existent money was hidden. They left the house with $20 they took from his bathrobe pocket. Novarro died as a result of asphyxiation—having choked to death on his own blood caused “allegedly” (and this is the Ryan Murphy AHS version) by a jeweled lead dildo that was given him by Rudolph Valentino being shoved down his throat.  (This was the Hollywood rumour for decades.  No one actually knows what caused him to choke.)

The two perpetrators were caught and sentenced to long prison terms, but were released on probation in the mid-1970s. Both were later re-arrested for unrelated crimes for which they served longer prison terms than for the murder of Novarro.  During the trial, Novarro’s sexual orientation was called into question with more vigor than the guilt or innocence of the defendants.

In a 1998 interview, Paul Ferguson finally assumed the blame for Novarro’s death. He emphasized that he and Tom had not gone to the home to rob the elderly film star, although they trashed his home as a ruse, to make police believe robbery had been the motive. They knew nothing of a supposed five thousand dollars that Novarro kept stashed behind a portrait in his home. Paul Ferguson blamed internal homophobia for the rage that led him to pummel Novarro into bloody insensibility. “When he [Novarro] kissed me, I reacted like a Catholic, what they call homosexual panic… It had nothing to do with Novarro, nothing to do with his being homosexual. It all had to do with how I saw myself. And the fact that my brother was there. And that he could see me in that homosexual act”

Tom Ferguson committed suicide on March 6, 2005 by slitting his throat in a Motel 6.

He left no suicide note.

Continue reading Gay History Month Halloween Edition – October 31: Happy Birthday Baby Jane, Toronto’s Mass Gay Bashings, and Silent Film Star Ramon Novarro Murdered With A Lead Jeweled Dildo? →

Gay History - July 20: The Mattachine Society's "Mission and Purposes, Cruising in Paris, Gerry Studds, and the Murder of John O'Connell

Gay History – July 20: The Mattachine Society’s “Mission and Purposes”, Cruising in Paris, Gerry Studds, and the Murder of John O’Connell

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1845: In Paris, a mob attacks a group of about 50 men arrested by police in a sweep of the Tuileries Gardens, a popular cruising area.

The Archives de la Bastille contain hundreds of reports of conversations between “sodomites” and police decoys in public spaces such as the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens. The reports include many of the same comments and gestures, as well as numerous variants in their opening lines. Thus, for example: Charles Gentil accosted a man listening to music emanating from the Tuileries palace by noting that “there are some fine instruments in this ensemble” and adding that “there are others that do not make so much noise but give more pleasure” (from the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Archives de la Bastille, November 1, 1728). He explained by exposing himself, as countless others did without the clever verbal prelude. Many “sodomites” discussed their endowments or endurance, preferences and adventures, all in order to impress and entice the object of their desires. Some declared that they had never liked women (sometimes in misogynistic terminology) and always liked men—which begins to sound like an assertion of personal sexual identity.

1951: The “Missions and Purposes” of the Mattachine Society are ratified under California corporation law.

The Society, founded upon the highest ethical and social principles, serves as an example for homosexuals to follow and provides a dignified standard upon which the rest of society can base a more intelligent and accurate picture of the nature of homosexuality than currently obtains in the public mind. The Society provides the instrument necessary to work with civic-minded and socially valuable organizations and supplies the means for the assistance of our people who are victimized daily as a result of our oppression. Only a Society, providing an enlightened leadership, can rouse the homosexuals — one of the largest minorities in America today — to take the actions necessary to elevate themselves from the social ostracism an unsympathetic culture has perpetrated upon them.

1983: The House votes 420 to 3 to censure Representatives Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) and Daniel B. Crane (R-Ill.) for sexual misconduct with House pages. Studds later reads reporters a statement saying that the censure was not warranted: his affair with the page was private and mutually voluntary. He adds that he hopes “to emerge from the present situation a wiser, a more tolerant and a more complete human being.” The censure strips Studds of his chairmanship of the Coast Guard and Navigation Subcommittee.   “We are here to repair the integrity of the United States House of Representatives,” proclaims Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia).

After retiring from Congress in 1997, Studds worked as a lobbyist for the fishing industry.

Studds and partner Dean T. Hara (his companion since 1991) were married in Boston on May 24, 2004, one week after Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage.

Gerry Studds died on October 14, 2006, in Boston, at age 69, several days after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Due to the federal ban on same-sex marriage, Hara was not eligible, upon Studds’ death, to receive the pension provided to surviving spouses of former members of Congress.. Hara later joined a federal lawsuit, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, that successfully challenged the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.

1981: Despite having privately acknowledged her “bisexuality” to officials from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Czechoslovakian- born tennis champion Martina Navratilova is finally
granted U.S. citizenship, six years after she defected.

1984: Forty-year-old gay San Franciscan John O’Connell is murdered, and another man injured, when five men, all in their late teens or early twenties, drive into the city from nearby Vallejo looking to “beat up some fags.”  The murderers are all released in 1990, after only serving four years of their 15-year-to-life terms.

Via UPI:

A 9 p.m. in the Polk Street district, a favorite area of homosexuals, two men walking along the street were accosted by four of the Vallejo group, one of them shouting anti-homosexual epithets.

John O’Connell, 42, suffered two blows and fell to the pavement. The medical evidence was that it was the fall, not the blows, that produced the cerebral trauma that caused death. 

The defendants left the scene laughing.

2005: Bill C-38 receives Royal Assent, legalizing same-sex marriage in Canada nationwide. The first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license under the new law is a couple from Alberta.

Travel firm ranks Canada as top destination for LGBTI honeymoons

Canada Lifts Restrictions On Blood Donations By Gay Men

Canada Lifts Restrictions On Blood Donations By Gay Men

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Via CTV:

A policy change years in the making, on Thursday Health Canada approved Canadian Blood Services’ submission to eliminate the three-month donor deferral period for gay and bisexual men. Moving away from a blanket ban, the national blood donor organization will be able to screen all donors regardless of gender or sexuality. Instead, donors will be screened based on their sexual behaviours. Canadian Blood Services (CBS) is expected to introduce the new behaviour-based questionnaire approach by Sept. 30. It will apply to both blood and plasma donations.

Too bad the United States has recently starting sliding back into the fascism of the uninformed.

WARNING: Anti-Vax Covidiot Truckers Plan Convoy From California To DC

WARNING: Anti-Vax Covidiot Truckers Plan Convoy From California To DC

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Plans for a demonstration by truckers in the United States similar to the one in Canada (by many American truckers) appear to be gaining momentum announced Brian Brase, a trucker who is organizing the American effort with no concern on how this will affect American families

Brase appeared on FRC hater Tony Perkins’ show last week. The next night, he was hosted by Tucker Carlson.

The projected route may start in Sacramento, Calif., and end in Washington, D.C., but Brase declined to comment on details of the convoy until an official announcement was made.

The real question is with a “supposed” trucker shortage in the U.S. already complicating the supply chain, these people will give up their income, risk losing their jobs and livelihoods to make a statement? .WHO exactly is financing these truck drivers? and convoys. It must cost a small fortune to use one of these vehicles for these endeavors..

Follow the money.

Over 100 Anti-LGBT Bills Introduced into State Legislatures So Far In 2023

Montreal’s Gay Village Erases The “Gay”

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Montreal’s famous LGBT neighborhood, known around the world as Le Village Gai (The Gay Village), wants to drop “gay” from it’s name.

On Wednesday, the neighborhood business association that represents more than 250 businesses in the neighborhood wrote on it’s Instagram page that from now on, the area wants to be known by a more inclusive — if slightly more generic — name. So from now on, the LGBTQ neighborhood in Canada’s second-largest city, Quebec, will be simply known as “the Village of Montreal, the largest 2SLGBTQ + village in the WORLD!”

By dropping the “gay” from its name, the association wants the area to reflect a more inclusive view of different nuances of sexual orientations and gender identities.

Said longtime gay rights activist Jacob Carter: “Erasing Gay visibility after decades of hard work is one truly fucked up notion of ‘progress.’ We don’t have to go back in the closet.”

Montréal’s Gay Village gets its name from gay businessman Bernard Rousseau, who in 1984 opened the “Cinéma du Village” porn theatre, which today is the Le National concert venue (1220 Sainte-Catherine Street East).

"Don't F**k With Cats" Gay Cannibal Killer Luka Magnotta Gets Married

“Don’t F**k With Cats” Gay Cannibal Killer Luka Magnotta Gets Married

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Luka Magnotta who was jailed for life for murdering and chopping up another gay man in 2012 and then eating parts of him and mailing other body parts to schools and political parties in his native Canada has married.

After signing up to dating forum Canadian Inmates Connect, in June 2015, Luka Magnotta, 34, fell for Anthony Jolin, an armed robber who is serving life for stabbing another inmate to death in the shower.

On his dating profile, Magnotta, who was dubbed the “Canadian Psycho”, described himself as a single white male who was seeking a “single white male, 28-38 years of age, white and in shape.”

He added: “One who is loyal, preferably educated, financially and emotionally stable for a long term committed relationship.“

“If you think you could be my prince charming, send me a detailed letter with at least two photos.”

Magnotta, a self obsessed model and escort, filmed himself eating his victim, had admitted killing Chinese student Jun Lin in May 2012, dismembering his body and mailing the wrapped hands and feet to schools and Canadian politicians.

A poem he wrote, which he sent with a body part to a school read: “Roses are red, violets are blue, the police will need dental records to identify you. Bitch.”

Toronto Sun reporter Alex West played a key role in the trial, testifying as to how he confronted Magnotta at a dingy hotel near Wembley Stadium in 2011 about sick internet videos of kittens being killed. That horrific act led Magnotta to be sought by internet sleuths and animal rights groups.

Six months after uploading the sick videos, male escort Magnotta killed Lin, 33, and filmed himself apparently eating the corpse with a knife and fork.

It took a jury eight days to throw out a not guilty plea that he was an insane schizophrenic not accountable for his actions – and convict him of the first degree murder of Lin.

A marriage licence from the Palais de justice de Sept-Îles with Magnotta’s mother Anna Yourkin listed as a witness enabled the convicts to be legally wed at the Pont-Cartier prison, where they are both serving time for murder.