When I first viewed the photo, the portrait of the two young men struck me. Initially, I could not quite place why, but then it dawned on me. In the summer of 1980, I was a reservist in the Canadian Army. I served in the 30th Field Artillery Regiment based in Ottawa. It was the summer following my graduation from high school and before my enrollment at Queen’s University in Kingston. I went to Canadian Forces Base Petawawa to work as a driver in a transportation company through July and August. I worked with young men from other regiments who were posted there, too–we were in our late teens and early twenties.
I recall when I was in university in 1982. I enrolled in a film studies class, and one of the films we watched was Pagan Rhapsody. There is a scene in the film where two men play a sex scene. Though the scene was as vanilla as possible–there was kissing and a little friendly groping (nothing graphic)–the student audience’s vocal expressions of disgust were notable. In 2024, male homosexuality was generally accepted as a natural expression of human intimacy and treated with sensitivity in film and television. Netflix series such as Young Royals and Heartstopper feature a gay romance and intimacy between high school boys in a way that leaves something to the viewers’ imagination. Both series are immensely popular with younger viewers. Things have changed since the screening of Pagan Rhapsody in 1982. Still, when it comes to public perceptions of intimacy between gay men, there are a lot of people who have an unsavoury fixation on what they imagine goes on when two men are intimate. I get expressions of disgust in the comments on blog posts I write on gay rights advocacy, where people say things like, “There’s nothing more disgusting than two men fucking each other in the ass,” and “Cocksucking is not a men’s issue.” I mean, that is beyond the pale.
In the summer of 1987, I lived with my boyfriend Fabio in a two-bedroom apartment in Kingston, Ontario. We met as students at Queen’s University and secretly carried on our love affair before moving in together. We became boyfriends during the burgeoning AIDS crisis. One evening, we sat in bed and watched a panel discussion held by one of the American News Networks–I cannot remember which one. What struck me was the inflammatory opening remark made by a conservative Congressman, whose name I do not remember, who asserted that “perversion and promiscuity” were to blame for the AIDS crisis. That sentiment was shared through the 1980s. I remember the stand-up comic Sam Kinison, who screamed in one of his routines that AIDS became an epidemic “because a few fags fuck some monkeys; they got tired of their own assholes.” Jerry Falwell claimed it was God’s judgement on homosexuals and blamed the spread of the disease into the innocent heterosexual population on bisexual men. Yes, AIDS was seen as a gay plague. Fabio and I, like countless gay men in the 1980s, were concerned. There was uncertainty about how easily the virus was transmitted. Before the dawn of the AIDS crisis, our biggest concern as students in the 1980s was the risk of an unwanted pregnancy or getting herpes.
I had a similar experience to the one dramatized in the video. It was in the late spring, early summer of 1980. I had graduated from high school and eagerly looked forward to enrolling at Queen’s University in the Fall. I served as a Reservist in the Canadian Army in an artillery regiment in Ottawa and made friends with another young man I met in the unit. We became fast friends. I made friends with that man and others in my regiment. Still, I was ribbed, called the “Regimental Fag” in the banter among the ranks. When I came to the Christmas Party in 1979 with a young woman for my date, I was asked, “So, you like girls?” We spent time alone together at his mother’s house. We sat on the living room floor and listened to Beatles records on the stereo. I remember my overwhelming desire for him; I wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss him. I did not understand why I felt that way, which was horrifying. I dared not try it as that would have gone badly for me (assuming he was not gay or did not return my feelings). Had I been singled out as a homosexual in 1980, it would have meant dismissal from the Service. I would likely have lost my friends and become the butt of salacious gossip.
The words “gun lobby” and “gun nut” are slurs invented by prohibitionists–people opposed to gun ownership and hunting–to besmirch the character of gun owners and hunters. I heard the term “gun nut” used on American television sitcoms like “All in the Family” as early as the 1970s. I shrugged it off at the time as inconsequential. I had no reason to believe as a boy that there was anything wrong with gun ownership and hunting. I remember how other children brought things like duck wings for show and tell in kindergarten and primary school. Wings taken from the wild ducks that their older brothers and fathers shot while out hunting. Other children proudly told the class about their fathers, who had returned from successful big game hunts. My dad and my uncle enjoyed hunting cottontail and jackrabbits when I was a boy. It was not until late in 1989, following the mass shooting at the engineering school at the University of Montreal that I first heard mention of the “gun lobby” used as a pejorative term in public parlance. It came as an unwelcome surprise. Continue reading →
Geoffrey & Mika 