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).