We were also impressed by the fact that, despite widespread repression, activists resisted temptations to couch their arguments in the shrill or confrontational terms one might expect of those on the frontlines of a nascent movement. Rather, it was their opponents who typically adopted this voice. Time and again, we came across records that exhibited the dignity, sophistication, and eloquence with which activists pursued their agenda in the face of fulminating taunts, insults, and diatribes.
One example we came across was a brief that was submitted to Ottawa City Council by Gays of Ottawa (GO). It formed part of a successful lobbying strategy that, in 1976, prompted Ottawa City Council to pass a resolution. It prohibited discrimination against lesbians and gay men in municipal employment. This made Ottawa only the second jurisdiction after Toronto to have any kind of rights legislation in place that addressed sexual orientation. Canadians would have to wait another twenty years for federal law to be enacted on this issue.
In presenting their cased, GO made an elegant reference to government’s role in “dispersing the fog of misunderstanding” that clouded people’s judgment of gays and lesbians. GO also made the following profound and hard-hitting statement: “Considered as a separate entity, homosexuals have been afforded fewer human and legal rights than have any other minority groups.” In a shrewd reference to Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s famous 1967 statement about decriminalizing homosexual acts, GO stated the following in its brief:
“The Prime Minister has said that the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. We suggest that if the state has no business there, then neither do employers, landlords, the police, or businessmen.”
GO included landlords in their comment because both public housing and private rentals could be denied if applicants were known to be gay or lesbian.
Perhaps the most prominent document produced by activists of that generation was a brief titled “We Demand.” It was submitted to the federal government in 1971 by a coalition of the earliest gay and lesbian political groups in this country. They used this document as a kind of Ten Commandments. It served as a set of guiding principals and manifesto for political action throughout the 1970s. The brief consisted of ten demands directed at the federal government.
The skill with which “We Demand” negotiated a wide variety of complicated social and legal issues surprised us given that a university student named Herbert Spier co-authored them. Spier later stated, "I must say that writing the demands came very easily … they really wrote themselves because they were obvious and just." His statement helps explain the grace, finesse, and deftness with which so many from that era voiced their vision for a more just and equitable society. When righteousness is on your side, it provides you with the clarity to articulate your position in thoughtful and sensitive terms we found lacking in arguments made by those who wanted homosexuals tossed back into the closet.