Tag Archives: Sodomy laws

Sing if you’re glad to be gay, sing if you’re happy that way. — the Tom Robinson Band

Robinson

An accusation was levelled at me last year when I publicly rejected the notion that gay became “queer.” The charge, in short, is that I am a selfish gay man. Now that gay rights are secured–the removal of the stigma of being gay, the freedom to live openly, to participate fully in society, the right to marry among them–I am content to “pull the ladder up after me.” That I reject “queer theory” is true; I made no secret of that. In particular, I object to the conflation of the transgender ideology with male homosexuality–notably gay rights advocacy. In a recent essay, I discussed the emergence of a movement called the LGB Alliance–an initiative to separate the T from the LGB. The problem I found with the LGB Alliance is that it is part of a struggle among feminists–a quarrel over whether transgender women are women or not and if there is a place for transgender women in the feminist movement. I stand by what I wrote in my earlier essay: feminist causes have no bearing on gay men’s issues, no more than does the transgender ideology. The gay rights movement and transgender ideology are unrelated and neither the twain should meet. Continue reading →

The counterculture is always repackaged and made into a product. It’s part of America. — Jim Jarmusch

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The history of the gay rights movement in the United States is fascinating. Is it a civil rights movement or is it a social justice movement? Is gay a demographic or is gay a community? Are gay rights the drive for civil rights, that gay people be at liberty, as individuals, to participate in society, openly, and free from persecution? Is it a social justice movement, the gay community driven by a countercultural constituency, intent on separating itself from mainstream culture? The answer to these questions is the gay rights movement in the United States is a combination of the two perspectives. To date, the successes of the gay rights movement in the United States are laudable. The repeal of laws that criminalized homosexual sex is a significant gain. Gay people live openly and are free to marry. True, elements of anti-gay prejudice linger, mainly from the ranks of the religious and socially conservative; moreover, there is only a patchwork of laws in place across the 50 states that prohibit discrimination in employment on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, I think these are the least of the worries for the gay rights movement in the United States. While both perspectives, civil rights and social justice, contributed to the success of the gay rights movement; what most concerns me about the current state of the gay rights movement in the United States is the influence of a decidedly countercultural constituency of U.S. society on the gay rights movement. In my opinion, this only undermines the successes of the gay rights movement in the United States and hinders its progress as a civil rights movement. Continue reading →

The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. — James Madison

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Mika and I have never travelled to the United States together. We have, individually, visited the United States on a number of occasions. Growing up I lived in Laurel, Maryland for several months in 1965 with my family. My father was serving in the Canadian Army at the time and was posted to Washington DC briefly. As a boy, Mika visited Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming with his family. I have been as far south in the United States as Florida; I took a holiday with my family during March break in 1977. I have been to New England and in 2012 had a very nice time visiting with a good friend and his family in Washington state. I have made periodic visits across the border into upstate New York on shopping trips. For our first trip together to the United States, Arizona is a state Mika and I are interested in visiting for a holiday. The appeal for us is to see the desert habitat, its hot, dry climate, the plants, like Sonora cactus, the wildlife, like road runners and javelinas and to get a taste of the culture of the Southwestern United States. Continue reading →

A person’s sexuality is so much more than one word “gay.” No one refers to anyone as just “hetero” because that doesn’t say anything. Sexual identity is broader than a label. — Gus Van Sant

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Recently the question came to mind as to why so many religious folk and social conservatives hold such a prurient fixation on what they imagine goes on in other people’s bedrooms. Sex is a part of every conjugal relationship: gay and straight. Sex is natural, a part of living and to enjoy. Sodomy laws, as they were called, were repealed in Canada in 1969. Then Minister of Justice Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously declaring in 1967, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” (CBC Digital Archives) Sodomy laws were repealed across the United States as of 2003 when U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision in Lawrence v. Texas Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, ruled that the state could not single out gay people for harassment and discriminatory treatment simply “because of ‘moral disapproval’ of homosexuality. He wrote of ‘respect’ for same-sex couples and warned that ‘the state cannot demean their existence,’ describing same-sex relationships as a ‘personal bond’ involving much more than just sex. Kennedy also wrote that reducing same-sex couples to ‘sex partners,’ as anti-gay organizations often do, is offensive in the same way that describing a husband and wife as nothing more than sex partners would be offensive.” (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) Continue reading →