Bill C-150: attitudes versus legislation
Bill C-150: attitudes versus legislation
By Dennis Yeo, Niagara community member
A former colleague, also gay and of a very similar vintage to my own, once remarked, “You can legislate behaviour, but you can’t legislate attitudes.” Perhaps that simple idea plays a significant role in our community’s lack of passion about our collective history. We have been led to believe, contrary to what we now realize, that when Bill C-150 passed in 1969 we were decriminalized and safer from prosecution and persecution than we actually are. And so the significance of specific events in the struggle over the last 50 years lose gravitas as those of us who lived it now measure the time since in decades, and those who came after never felt the urge to know much more about it than the snippets delivered by the media during Pride Months.
In an article printed in The Globe and Mail in 2009, Senator Laurier LaPierre rightly gives credit to Pierre Trudeau for Bill C-150, but Trudeau’s executive assistant, Tim Porteous, attributes the legislation not only to his boss’ conception of a “just society” but also to his “sense of mischief” and the pleasure he took in provoking people. For me, this changed the context, so I dug a little deeper into the events of that time in 1968-69.
Trudeau was still Justice Minister in early 1968 when the original Bill C-195 was drafted and seems to have had a genuine sense of right and wrong and a dedication to righting the wrongs. It was an omnibus bill that referenced a variety of matters, including abortion and gun control, but it was the issue of homosexuality that most riled the masses and engendered fierce debate and fear-mongering in and around the House of Commons.
Interestingly, by the time the revised bill, now C-150, came to the House for a vote, Trudeau had been elected Prime Minister and it was left to the new Justice Minister John Turner who “somewhat reluctantly” re-introduced the bill in December that year. He declined to be interviewed by The Globe and Mail for that 2009 article but seemed at the time, January ’69, to assume the role of just the messenger (who didn’t wish to be shot), giving all credit for the legislation to Trudeau. He is quoted as telling the House of Commons that it was Trudeau “who had the courage to assemble it, to introduce it into parliament and to defend it across the land under the sharp scrutiny of a general election.”
However, his comments didn’t end there. Turner also maintained that “there is nothing in the bill which would condone homosexuality, promote it, endorse it, advertise it, popularize it in any way whatsoever.” That sounds very much like the messenger keeping his distance from the message itself. He went on to suggest that there were areas of private behaviour that even supporters of the bill found “repugnant” and “immoral” even if not criminal, and that acts between people who “suffer under a sexual deviation,” as long as there was no corruption of minors, no force involve and they weren’t performed in public, should not fall under the criminal code. He topped it off by reminding the House that, “We are not for a moment conceding that homosexual acts are in any way to be equated to ordinary, normal acts of intercourse.”
So, there you have it. Bill C-150 was intended to legislate the behaviour of those who oppressed us because of our “criminality.” However, attitudes could not be legislated as evidenced by the tone of those at the top. The context in its entirety, adds new dimensions to our history and sets the scene for the battles, peaceful and violent, that were to be fought over the next couple of decades.
Stay tuned…
Dennis Yeo
His views do not necessarily represent those of OUTniagara.