Whenever equality is denied, Gay Liberation can not go forward!1 – GATE
The Organization
GATE Vancouver (1971-80) was the main gay liberation organization in Vancouver. The group was specifically a male gay liberation group that combined a feminist and gay liberation analysis of heterosexism and patriarchy with a Marxist analysis of capitalist society; many of its members had belonged to Marxist organizations.2 It was lead by Maurice Flood, a leading theoretician of gay liberation. Its newspaper, Gay Tide was important not only as a major outlet for gay liberation concerns, but also because it served as the source of GATE’s litigation: the Gay Tide Case.3 The major stated goal of GATE was the achievement of civil rights for gays an lesbians and the organization’s strategies included lobbying, electoralism, litigation, and organizing public pickets and demonstrations.4 GATE was a staunch advocate of human rights activism, firmly believing that gay liberation could be achieved through the attainment of human rights and proclaiming that gay people “have the right to self-determination and control over their own lives.”5
Activism
GATE’s activism combated heterosexism in Vancouver. One way GATE did so was by focusing its advocacy efforts on ending police harassment and repression of gays and lesbians as part of the law’s function to control and regulate the sexuality of those seen as deviant through a heterosexist lens.6 Over the course of several years GATE Vancouver organized strong responses to police harassment through the use of public demonstrations. In 1977 at a community form “350 people confronted police over a campaign to ‘clean up’ the downtown area that featured selective law enforcement. Some at the meeting complained about being harassed by the police for kissing and holding hands on the street.” 7
In Toronto on December 30, 1977 police raided The Body Politic (TBP), a major gay Canadian magazine publication on the grounds that it had released an article that was claimed to promote pedophilia. This raid “sent shock waves through the gay and lesbian community, generating outrage and anger.”8 (Warner, 108-9). TBP’s officers Ed Jackson, Gerald Hannon, and Ken Popert, were subsequently charged under the Criminal Code with using the mail to distribute “immoral, indecent, and scurrilous’ material.”9 We see a very clear example of heterosexism here. The freedom of the press has been compromised in order to uphold heterosexist society’s morals. It is no coincidence that a homosexual article is the offending material that prompted the police raid. This is consistent with the heterosexist view that homosexuality is deviant, repugnant, and encourages immorality. The choice to raid TBP was based on unfounded prejudice, that is, that the offending article “encouraged” pedophilia.
This incident also highlights the other half of the double standard of freedom of the press (see the Gay Tide Case). In the Gay Tide Case, the courts rule that the Vancouver Sun should be given freedom of the press to exclude homosexual material. In the raid of TBP freedom of the press is thrown aside to allow the police to forcibly remove so-called obscene material. GATE Vancouver immediately held a demonstration protesting the raid on 1 January 1978, the first of many such events held over the subsequent years.10 Thus the raid not only was founded on overt heterosexist beliefs, but this outbreak of heterosexism served as a catalyst for GATE’s protests.
Decline
Despite its determination, GATE was not to last. By 1980, GATE Vancouver largely ceased to exist on account of its failure to sufficiently broaden its membership base.11 For the most part, GATE was a small group of militant activists; founding member Roedy Green recalls that GATE’s membership, “was so grim nobody wanted to hang out with them” and in his estimation, the group had drifted “far, far too out on the edge to capture the mainstream. They just alienated everybody. They were just too rabid.”12 While GATE dedicated much of its energy to fighting for gay rights and against police harassment, the issue was appealing to outsiders, both within the gay and lesbian community and in the general public. On top of issues in drawing external support, GATE experienced inside issues as well. John Wilson, a founding member of GATE Toronto notes, “There always tended to be all kinds of divisions in GATE, sort of factions going on here and there. It’s amazing that it actually held together as long as it did, considering some of the differences were quite heated at times.”13 The bottom line was that while the members of GATE believed strongly in their cause, they were inflexible, a quality that cost GATE externally in expanding its membership, and forming inner cohesion.
Summary
GATE was one of Canada’s leading gay rights groups, helping to influence the gay and lesbian liberation movement nationally and advocating the abolition of the age of consent laws, choice on abortion, opposition to the Vietnam War, and rejection of gay liaison with the police. GATE employed a variety of public actions and the newspaper Gay Tide to get out its message. The organization’s militancy and inflexibility proved to be its undoing, and the lack of new members and the conflicts between its current members led to the organizations gradual decline.
Footnotes
1 NGRC, ‘Gay Liberation and Quebec,’ NGRC Forum 2 (Fall 1977).
2 Smith, Miriam Catherine. Lesbian and Gay Rights in Canada: Social Movements and Equality-seeking: 1971-1995. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 53.
3 Ibid, 48
4 Ibid, 49
5 Warner, Tom. Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 73.
6 Ibid, 106.
7 Robert Cook, ‘350 Demand End to Police Harassment,’ TBP, May 1977.
8 Warner, Never Going Back, 108-9.
9 ‘TBP Raided and Charged,’ TBP, Feb. 1978.
10 Warner, Never Going Back, 109.
11 Paul Trollope, ‘GATE Vancouver Passes into History,’ TBP, Aug. 1980.
12 Roedy Green, 13 Oct. 1992.
13 John Wilson, 23 Feb. 1993.