Gay
By Eric Dowd
Toronto – Ontario has come a long way on gay rights when a
Liberal cabinet minister says he and his male partner plan to marry and
adopt a child and no-one raises an eyebrow.
And
the leader of its Progressive Conservative party, which for many years had
to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting rights for gays, warns
a federal Conservative leader possibly on the verge of becoming prime
minister not to revive a debate on banning same-sex marriages.
And
pillars of the establishment including Ontario’s chief justice, who once
was seen by gays as an enemy, turn out to pay tribute to the province’s
best-known gay activist. This is among the greatest metamorphoses the
province has known.
Health
Minister George Smitherman said he is considering bringing forward a plan
to marry his male partner because polls suggest Stephen Harper, who has
said he would hold a free vote in the Commons on same-sex marriage, may
win the federal election.
Smitherman
is the first openly gay MPP, although by no means the first gay MPP or
minister – there have been and are gays in all parties.
Previous
gay MPPs and ministers lived in fear their sexual orientation would be
revealed and held against them, and presumably some still do, because they
do not volunteer it, which is their right.
A
respected attorney general in a previous Liberal government, Ian Scott,
was chased down a legislature corridor by a reporter demanding to know if
he was gay, which presumably the reporter felt would offend readers.
Scott
escaped, but after leaving politics agreed he was gay in a sad memoir in
which he listed how many of his friends died of AIDS.
In
mitigation of the Conservatives, it should be said their leader at that
time, Larry Grossman, refused the reporter’s request he ask Scott if he
was gay in the legislature, where he would have had to respond on the
record.
Grossman,
often thought of as hard-nosed, showed fairness by saying he would ask
only if there was evidence the minister’s homosexuality was harming his
effectiveness in his job and there was none.
Mike
Harris, as Conservative premier a few years later, poured cold water on
same-sex marriage by saying his idea of a family was him, his wife and
their children, but it was not a valid comparison, because he later left
his wife and married a younger, more glamorous woman.
The
current Ontario Conservative leader, John Tory, chosen in 2004, has
supported Harper vigorously in the current election, but insisted he would
be unwise to revive the same-sex marriage issue.
Harper
is under pressure because many highly vocal Conservatives strongly oppose
same-sex-marriage and one has gone as far as to warn it threatens to wipe
out society.
Tory,
more moderate generally than recent Conservative leaders, said the issue
has been dealt with by the federal parliament and legislature, which now
allow same-sex marriage, and courts which prompted them by ruling it is
unconstitutional to exclude some from rights and freedoms given others.
Tory
said governments have other concerns they need to deal with including
healthcare, crime and finances.
Tributes
also were paid recently in a bar here to George Hislop, who was the
best-known gay activist in Ontario and died at the age of 78.
Hislop
had been a leader in Ontario’s gay rights movement for four decades,
organized its first parades and is considered by it as the first openly
gay politician in Canada, because he ran unsuccessfully declaring he was
gay for Toronto city council in 1980 and the legislature in 1981.
Smitherman
said Hislop carved a path and made it easier for other gays including
himself to get elected.
Pillars
of the community attended, including Roy McMurtry, Ontario’s chief
justice, who was Conservative attorney general when police arrested
hundreds of gays in bathhouses and charged a gay publication with
obscenity and whom gays often accused of harassing them. Gays have built a
lot of new bridges.
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