|
Queen Mum, gay activist and queer pope George
Hislop died in October. White smoke has still not been seen over
Church Street. So who will be…
Our Next Gay Leader?
 We’ve
arrived, dahlink. We tapped our red shoes together and brought large
chunks of Oz home with us. Much of what we could (mostly) manage
to agree on has come true.
Now we’re breaking down into ever smaller cliques. Not that there’s
anything wrong with that. Dozens of local grassroots homos – hundreds,
even – are pushing change into their little pockets of the world.
And mundane acts are the stuff of resistance and education.
But what about a hero? With the death of George Hislop, a vacuum
has been left. Can anybody bring together a fractured community?
Can anyone fill Hislop’s glory hole? Maybe. As Mork would say: “Take
me to your leader. Nannoo-nannoo.” Here are fab’s top contenders:
André Boisclair
The political party-hearty fag |
The new leader of the separatist Parti Québécois,
and quite possibly Quebec’s next premier, has nosed coke-sniffing
into the public eye. André Boisclair is a freemarket guy who
defeated a straight, married, middle-aged woman with kids who
was far to his left on the political spectrum in the PQ leadership
race. There was a smidgen of English in Boisclair’s acceptance
speech (shock!), but he said nothing about gayness. His team
sure recruited during Montreal’s Pride celebrations, though.
The sign-up booth was inundated.
Boisclair was outed in the alt press years ago when, as a provincial
cabinet minister, he went back on a promise to fund a gay antiviolence
group. When Boisclair finally came out in 2000, he spat: “I
will not allow anyone to define my identity or group I belong
to.... I associate with my friends, my family and Quebec. Not
with the gay community. I have never chosen to live in the [gay]
community. And I’m not about to begin today.”
Apparently, Boisclair got over it. “I wouldn’t say that today,”
he told a reporter earlier this year. (Mind you, while his gayness
is mentioned in his blog – at boisclair.blogspot.com – it’s
not mentioned by him.)
With André Boisclair, it seems all is forgiven. He gives every
one of us hope. Collapsed nose or not, I’m gonna be prime minister. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay
leader: 4 to 1 |
| ODDS |
that he’ll want to be: 20 to 1 |
| |
Jack Layton
The straight guy |
Maybe we need a hetero, unencumbered by all that
eating-ourown baggage, to invite us all into his big tent. Jack
Layton is Canada’s original metrosexual, a man with politics
in his blood. He’s the Left’s Energizer Bunny. A long-time Toronto
city councillor, Layton’s now the leader of the federal NDP.
And he’s just so darned gay-positive, it hurts. He once told
me a bathhouse joke when showing off his tea-towel election
gimmick.
Two of the 17 MPs in his caucus are out: Libby Davies hopes
to decriminalize prostitution (and, by extension, the gay tubs)
and Bill Siksay introduced a private member’s bill to enshrine
human rights protection for trans people. (Both efforts are
doomed.) If the gay community wants it, Layton will try. He
actually will.
But like any professional politician, Layton won’t stick his
neck out until he knows what he’s supposed to say. “With the
passage of marriage legislation, in a sense it’s like a watershed.
There probably are a lot of directions [in which the queer movement]
could go right now. It really is at a turning point... I’ll
be listening to see what emerges. I’m close to it.”
Layton will say that human rights for trans people are a big
deal. Otherwise, he defers to Metropolitan Community Church
of Toronto pastor Brent Hawkes, whose Pride Day sermon Layton
enjoyed. “It was about the concept of inclusion and lessons
from the early struggles of the gay community that now need
to be broadened.... There’s a synergy with what NDPers are concerned
about.”
Geez, Louise. Who could argue against feel-good diversity and
inclusion? Group hug!
Bonus points: Married to City Councillor Olivia Chow, also a
huge queer supporter. Double-plus-good: Drags tireless gay powerhouse
Bob Gallagher everywhere he goes. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 4
to 1 |
| ODDS |
that he’ll go off-message: 10 to 1 |
| |
Bob Gallagher
The activist and backroom boy |
Jack Layton recalls meeting Bob Gallagher (pictured
at left, with Ed Broadbent) during the demonstrations against
the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids. Give the man a megaphone,
and every voice would fall quiet. Since then, Gallagher has
been an important part of just about every queer movement in
Canada, including helping to found Canadians for Equal Marriage.
For years Gallagher worked for Toronto City Councillor Olivia
Chow. He was encouraged to bring gay issues into the office.
More recently, he was poached by NDP leader Jack Layton to help
work for a big win in the upcoming federal election. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 5 to 1,
because a federal election will keep him too busy |
| ODDS |
that he already is our next gay leader: 2
to 1 |
| |
Peter Bochove
The activist and backroom boy |
All together now: it’s the sex, stupid. If the
prissies can get that through their thick skulls, Peter Bochove
will be our next gay leader. “I do think sex is the issue, but
it’s not necessarily a gay issue,” says Bochove, who has co-owned
at least three bathhouses (currently Spa Excess) throughout
his life as an entrepreneur. “This also applies to straight
people, and in particular to sextrade people [most of them women],
who are some of the most abused people on this earth.”
His coalition, the Committee to Abolish the 19th Century – because
that’s when our antiquated anti-sex laws were written – has
already brought on board Toronto Public Health, the AIDS Committee
of Toronto, lobby group Egale, the Hassle Free Clinic and Sex
Professionals of Canada (fronted by activist Valerie Scott).
While a parliamentary subcommittee is looking into Canada’s
indecency and bawdy-house laws, Bochove says no mainstream politician
who wants to be re-elected will fuss about the need to rescind
morality legislation.
Bochove says it will take 10 years to overturn the laws – and
we’ll need the courts to do it. Calgary’s Terry Haldane, arrested
on a charge of being a found-in in a common bawdy house during
the 2002 raid on the Goliath’s tubs, was foiled in his effort
to fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada when prosecutors
panicked and dropped the charge. Bochove needs to find an arrestee
who’s prepared to cope with the costs and the media circus of
a legal fight.
Our nominee is not a photogenic hunk. But he’s got a lot of
righteous anger (dating back to the time he was arrested and
his business, the Richmond Street Health Emporium, was completely
smashed up by keener cops during the ’81 Toronto bath raids).
Bochove’s also a powerful speaker, has a sense of humour and
knows his stuff cold. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 6
to 1 |
| ODDS |
if he had a better body and all his hair:
2 to 1 |
| |
Rinaldo Walcott
The academic |
What? Just one issue? Hey, there’s a new queer
politics, and it’s all interconnected. Dr. Rinaldo Walcott can
blurt out five complex political ideas in five minutes. Yowza.
My neurons are still reeling. Hell, try to say his job title
five times fast: he’s the Canada Research Chair in Social Justice
and Cultural Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education of the University of Toronto. Got that?
Issue number one: “Trans issues are really the next kind of
queer struggle,” says Walcott. But even within that struggle,
there’s a difference of opinion, he notes. There are the queer-gender-fuck
folks who aren’t going to conform in any way. And another trans
group wants to “pass – to take up, for lack of a better word,
a normative position.”
Numbers two and on: “Some young urban queers...have come of
age in a post-rights era.” For them, the old rigid identities
of gay and lesbian don’t make sense. They also don’t have an
understanding of the history of the struggle, and Walcott wonders
how the community can “bring young people into a more nuanced
[knowledge of] history.”
As for those still identifying as gay and lesbian, they need
to push their politics out and beyond. He’ll know when that
day has arrived: “when I see queers out there marching against
poverty, or for social housing, for things not immediately connected
to our identity.” Somebody needs to lead that discussion and
that movement.
Walcott says the next gay leader will be a queer of colour –
probably a woman – whose politics are informed by feminism.
That’s the kind of person who can truly make all the connections
among social and political and sexual identities, and bring
people together. Especially if identity is a bit passé. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 8
to 1 |
| ODDS |
if he learns to speak in more digestible
sound bites for the media: 5 to 1 |
| |
Ann-Marie MacDonald
The lesbian cultural icon |
Ann-Marie MacDonald has been a bit of a lesbian
heartthrob for years, starting with acting (I’ve Heard the
Mermaids Singing). Then came a small but carefully crafted
output of plays (like Goodnight Desdemona (Good
Morning Juliet)) and books (The Way the Crow Flies
and Fall on Your Knees, chosen for Oprah’s international-career-making
Book Club). All this while living the life of a cultural icon,
whether she’s comfy with that or not.
One local admirer sees MacDonald as the perfect choice for the
next Governor General of Canada. Adrienne Clarkson and current
title-holder Michaëlle Jean were both CBC journalists with interests
in the cultural life of the nation. “Keep the telejournalist
streak alive!” huzzahs my pal. “And a lesbian to boot!”
Mind you, when Clarkson was tapped as Governor General of Canuckistan,
she quickly and quietly got hitched, legitimating her long-time
living-in-sin arrangement with philosopher John Ralston Saul.
Luckily, MacDonald has already tied the knot with partner Alisa
Palmer. |
| ODDS |
that she’ll be our next gay leader:
15 to 1 |
| |
Wayson Choy
The jaded pansy |
You don’t like the Ann-Marie-MacDonaldas- Governor-General
idea? Hey, I’ve got other ideas. Like Wayson Choy for G.G. He’s
an artsie, he’s a smartsie and he writes books, too. His first
novel, The Jade Peony, even made it to No. 91 on a
new list of Canada’s 100 most important books. (Mind you, it
was just a hop, skip and a jump away from royal commission reports
that made Nos. 23, 28, 38 and 47.)
Choy says the next evil looming is fundamentalism. “The danger
is [in] being tolerated, but not respected,” he says. “The next
battle is to make sure we get the respect, so that the rights
mean something.” Choy says the aboriginal community is just
discovering that it’s been tolerated, but not respected. He
describes the current attitude towards minorities: “Bring out
the folk dances, bring out the queers – and then go away.” |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 15
to 1 |
| |
Irshad Manji
The international star |
It takes nerve to take on the right-wing religious
nuts, especially when some of them are honest-to- God violent.
Irshad Manji, a one-time journalist and political backroomer,
got attention with her first book, Risking Utopia: On the
Edge of a New Democracy, and even more attention as she
hosted the groundbreaking series Queer Television on
mainstream Citytv.
As a self-proclaimed queer Muslim, Manji was already courting
controversy. But with her latest tome, recently reissued under
the title The Trouble With Islam Today, she’s become
an international star, and a role model to young progressive
Muslims of all sexual orientations around the world. Extenuating
circumstance: We eat our own once they’re that successful. |
| ODDS |
that she’ll be our next gay leader:
32 to 1. (The requisite police bodyguard would cramp her style.) |
| |
Will Munro
The alt-culture vulture |
Draft Will Munro!
Dave Meslin, founder of the Toronto Public Space Committee,
is already hard at work on his next project: City Idol. Planned
for March, its winner will run for city council as a person
of all the peoples.
Meslin wants Munro in there. “Will invests so much time and
energy creating community through artistic events. He’s just
everywhere.” The trashy Vazaleen is only one of activist and
artist Munro’s incredibly successful musico-cultural gatherings.
“He creates space for energy to flourish.” |
| ODDS |
Munro will become our next gay city councillor:
Let’s see.
Take one hundred Idol contestants, divide by community involvement,
add volunteers but subtract voter apathy... Um, I dunno. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 7
to 1 |
| |
Svend Robinson
The comeback kid |
Lawdy, another New Democrat. I know, it’s getting
silly – but it’s not my fault. The party is so full of faggots.
Robinson was the first Canadian federal politician to come out,
in 1988, and was the only out politician for many long, lonely
years. As a pol, his arrogance made him loud, obnoxious, pushy
and a media hog who was always ready to talk about queer stuff.
He led the charge in the House of Commons.
It all collapsed when he pleaded guilty last year to stealing
an expensive ring, an episode he blamed on mental illness. It
got him a great headline count, though.
Robinson has been working for a union, but is now going to run
for the NDP in the riding of Vancouver Centre in the upcoming
federal election. Can he win re-election? And would he be a
gay spokesperson again? “I’d be able to speak out strongly,”
he says. “But I’d want to join my voice with others... I’m hoping
we’ll have a good strong presence [in the House of Commons].
I care passionately, and I will always speak out about gay issues,
whether I’m in Parliament or not.”
Robinson says the gay movement needs to spread beyond Canada’s
borders. “It’s the global struggle for equality and justice
and freedom for LGBT people. Too often we forget our brothers
and sisters are persecuted and jailed, in some cases killed.
We really should feel a sense of responsibility. We are a global
brotherhood and sisterhood.” Within our own borders, he says,
it’s the kids. Too many families and schools still aren’t safe.
Remember when the bigots screamed that we were raping and recruiting
their children? That gay equals pedophile? We’ve finally grown
up enough that we can look them right in the eye and tell the
truth: we’re not recruiting the kids, but saving them. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 8
to 1 |
| |
Gilles Marchildon
The official leader of the gays |
Gilles who? Marchildon runs Egale Canada, the
country’s big-shot queer lobby group (operating on itty-bitty
resources and a big dose of Marchildon’s media sluttiness).
But don’t call him the executive director: “That’s Mister
Chief Faggot to you,” he says.
Egale is it, so Marchildon is the mainstream’s expert on all
things gay, whether we like it or not. Go-to boy glad-hands
the politicians, tracks political trends and hits the panic
button.
Today’s panic button? The looming federal election. “We’re going
to be monopolized for the next couple of months,” says Marchildon.
Two bigots have launched Defend Marriage Canada: sweethearts
Pat O’Brien (the independent MP for London-Fanshawe, who bolted
from the Grits over homo nuptials) and Dr. Grant Hill (a former
Alberta Reform-Alliance-Conservative MP), who worries very much
about your bum. Hill is obsessed with the immorality of “gay
bowel syndrome,” which is proof God doesn’t want anybody’s weewee
in there. (Does Hill wake up sweating in the middle of the night
thinking about it?)
The pair will help anti-same-sex-marriage candidates get elected.
Activists are petrified of the queer marriage bill being rescinded.
Imagine how that would boost the bigots. There’s no choice but
to fight back.
Meanwhile, a gay kid is being beaten to a pulp in a local high
school. But Marchildon says some resources from priorities like
Egale’s Safe Schools Project must be diverted to stop the election
of anti-queer politicians, or the longer-term risks will make
for an even worse mess. Earnest, isn’t it?
Earnestness bonus: in August, Marchildon married Gord Klassen,
his snookie-bun of three years, in an Ottawa Unitarian church.
Awww. (But don’t be too cuted out – the pair met on an, ahem,
“dating” telephone service.) |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader:
2 to 1, because he’s quoted in all the press releases. |
| |
Keith Cole
The long shot |
So far, we’ve had two save-thekiddies sermons.
Enough already. “There is so much money thrown at youth programs
now,” says Toronto performer and filmmaker Keith Cole. Yes,
youth need a voice, he snorts. But some of what they have to
say “is just crap.” Coddling the young ’uns doesn’t help them.
In fact, we’re creating a generation that “feels entitled.”
“When I was their age, there was no program for me...
I got beaten up... and I turned out just fine,” says Cole. The
recent death of activist George Hislop has led him to consider
the importance of remembering the past. Political accomplishments
matter, but so do the social and queer politics we risk leaving
behind as we achieve greater acceptance. That’s exactly where
you’d expect an artist to go, especially one who’s spent so
much time and energy organizing community events like Cheap
Queers – the affordable cabaret that brings culture to the masses
during Pride – and, yes, teaching homeless queer youth to tap
dance in Kensington Market.
Send those queer youth to write a term paper in the Canadian
Lesbian and Gay Archives, says Cole. Then they’ll learn something
worthwhile. Like supporting and caring for our history. |
| ODDS |
that he’ll be our next gay leader: 20 to
1. Maybe someone with better stats will steal his idea? |
| |
Mary-Woo Sims
The servant of thepeople |
Mary-Woo Sims was once described as “one of Toronto’s
leading lesbian activists” – and it was absolutely true, until
she moved to British Columbia. In Ontario, she did it all: filing
human rights complaints, doing employment and pay equity work,
lobbying for same-sex spousal benefits, plus anti-racism activism
on top of it all.
Then she returned to BC, and was immediately appointed Chief
Human Rights Commissioner in 1997. She was celebrated for her
uncompromising stance on trans rights. In response to the commission’s
work under her tenure, the commission was dismantled by the
new provincial Liberal government in 2002. For Sims, the biggest
worry is complacency. “Many in the mainstream queer community
ask me, what more is there to do?” Well, her answer is trans
rights, queer youth and fighting off right-wing lunatics. And
many homos need to look at themselves, too: “As a queer community,
we have to come to terms with and address our own as well as
societal racism, ableism, ageism and other forms of discrimination/oppression.”
If Sims has a fireplace, the mantel is covered with plaques
and awards (including the Chinese Canadian Pioneer Award). She
now runs a consulting firm that specializes in diversity training
(plus human rights investigations and mediation). And most recently,
she co-chaired Canadians for Equal Marriage. Phew! Let’s leave
it at that. |
| ODDS |
that she’ll become our next gay leader: 14
to 1 |
| |
Allison Brewer
The one who’ll work really hard |
Allison Brewer is the first out homosexual to
lead a major political party in Canada. Unfortunately, it’s
in the teeny province of New Brunswick. And her party’s only
MLA was her predecessor, who resigned.
All that doesn’t change the fact that Brewer is one for the
history books. And you just know she’s gonna work like a maniac
to pull her party up into a contender.
Brewer is a – you guessed it – New Democrat. But not a politician
(though occasionally a civil servant). Her life has been spent
in activism – women’s issues galore, founding and running an
abortion clinic and pushing for the mayor of Fredericton to
proclaim Pride Day. She won a Governor General’s Award last
year, possibly the first person to receive one based in part
on her work in the LGBT rights movement.
With same-sex marriage a reality, says Brewer, “the politics
is all done now. We have all we need from government. Now it
seems to me the thing is education, educating the public.” Brewer
says that also means educating our own community, some of whom
need a trans primer.
Brewer’s most recent arrest came in August, for two unpaid New
Brunswick parking tickets that date back to when she was living
in Nunavut and lent her car to a friend. Her most notorious
and terrifying arrest occurred in totalitarian China in 1995,
when extremely cranky Beijing police blamed her for stringing
up a banner that called for lesbian rights during the United
Nations World Conference on Women.
Having said all this, Brewer’s virtually unknown in the rest
of Canada. Ontario, at the centre of the universe, doesn’t care
about the boonies. |
| ODDS |
that she’ll be our next gay leader:
19 to 1 |
| ODDS |
if she moved to Toronto: 3 to 1 |
Eleanor Brown is a Montreal-based
writer. Read her blog at
www.OpinionatedLesbian.com
|
archive