‘No place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation’
‘No place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation’
By Dennis Yeo, Niagara community member
Our LGBTQ history in Canada prior to the Stonewall quake and the aftershocks it sent our way seems pretty dark in retrospect. During the British American and British North American eras when we were considered more as a colony than a country on the international scene, there were laws on the books that considered same-gender sexual behavior to be a capital crime. Execution was a possible sentence but, thankfully, there are no surviving records of any person having been executed under this law. “Gross indecency” laws replaced them before the turn of the 20th century.
Then came Everett Klippert and, through his experience, a faint light began to flicker. That perverted “dangerous offender” had been sentenced to an indefinite prison term, a ruling that was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1967 which suggested life imprisonment as the maximum penalty for homosexual behavior.
The whole situation must have felt troublesome to liberal-thinking politicians of the time. Arnold Peters, a CCF MPP (later the NDP) prepared a private member’s bill in 1964 to decriminalize homosexuality in Canada, although the bill never made it to a vote in the House of Commons.
By 1968, though, that randy celebrity politician Pierre Elliott Trudeau was Attorney General in the Liberal government of the day under PM Lester B. Pearson. Being the “mischievous” and “provocative” guy that he was, within a few weeks of the Court’s decision, he introduced bill C-150 to Parliament to liberalize the Canadian Criminal Code. One aim of the amendments was to decriminalize homosexual behavior between adults* (also abortion, gambling, gun laws). Tim Porteous, Trudeau’s executive assistant, says the Criminal Code amendments both fit with his boss’ conception of a “just society” and suited his “sense of mischief.” “He liked to provoke people,” Porteous once said. Trudeau’s bill was nothing if not provocative.
About his legislation, AG Trudeau famously commented, “It’s bringing the laws of the land up to contemporary society I think. Take this thing on homosexuality. I think the view we take here is that there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.** I think that what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code. When it becomes public this is a different matter, or when it relates to minors this is a different matter.”
And with that, the light glowed a little brighter for Canadian homosexuals…or so we have been led to believe.
Stay tuned for more…
(with text from “Trudeau’s ‘indelible imprint: The bill that (mostly) decriminalized gay sex” by Senator Laurier Lapierre in Xtra, May, 2009)
Dennis Yeo
His views do not necessarily represent those of OUTniagara.
