"That's so Gay"

So lately there's been a whole lot of talk about homosexuality in the media.  For the past few weeks my news and twitter feeds have been full of stories about the continual stupidity of the Catholic school boards in Ontario, the dawn of the so-called "Post-Mo", and just the other I heard  about Elle Noir, a Trans performer in Halifax who was shot on Tuesday, and how despite the fact that it had all the makings of one, the Police aren't treating the attack as a hate crime.  Now, there are people who are going to complain about the things I'm going to say right off the bat because I am a straight, white woman,  but as a person who cares about social justice, knows and loves many wonderful queer people, and has an opinion.  I've decided to throw my two cents in.


The Gay community has been up in arm's lately about Paul Aguirre-Livingston's controversial essay in The Grid about his experience of being a young gay man coming of age in Toronto where gay marriage has been legalized.  According to Aguirre-Livingston, this generation of gays are living a life free from political struggle, in a world that accepts people for who they are regardless of their sexuality.  Sexuality for this generation of gay men and women, he argues, is secondary.  He describes the new life of the gay man in Toronto in his essay:

We vacation with our boyfriends in fabulously rustic country homes that belong to our parents, who don’t mind us coming to stay as a couple. Hell, we even marry our boyfriends, if we choose to, on rooftops overlooking Queen West. Our sexual orientation is merely secondary to our place in society. We don’t need to categorize or define ourselves as gay, and who we sleep with—mostly men and, hey, sometimes women—isn’t even much of a topic of conversation anymore. The efforts of Wittman and his peers produced a whole new type of gay. Say hello to the post-modern homo. The post-mo, if you will.

While Aguirre-Livingston's personal experience is completely valid, a lot of people are taking issue with the sweeping generalizations he's making about the gay community in Toronto and in general.  While many people may live this lifestyle and be accepted for who they are, this is by no means the norm, even in Toronto.  This reminds me of something that I hear all the time as a Feminist in today's society "But we have achieved equality! Feminism is outdated and unnecessary now."  This is absolutely not true, women have made great strides, but we still live in a world where I can (and have) been turned down for a job because I was a woman, and they thought a man would be a better candidate for the job, where women don't make the same wages as men do and don't hold as many top positions in companies.  And that's just in the developed world.  The reason people feel they don't need to fight for women's rights is because institutional, public sexism is no longer popular.  Sexism is quieter, less obvious, but still present.  Apathetic gay men and women don't even have this excuse.  In some circles public and institutional Homophobia is still very much in vogue, and there is still so much ground to cover. Although I find nothing about this article personally offensive because I'm on the outside looking in, I do see the danger in this kind of thinking.  The status of women in Canada has declined significantly in the past few years, and although everybody loves to blame Harper for it, I really believe that the reason Harper gets away with it is because so many women believe that they don't need to fight for their rights anymore.  I'd hate to see this kind of thing happen with the Gay Rights movement.  


One of the saddest things about the essay in the Grid is the idea that 20-something gays are enjoying freedom and acceptance, when the news is full of stories of gay high school students who are fighting for their right to assemble and be recognized.  It all started in January when the Halton Catholic school board banned Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA).   The chair of the HCDSB defended the board's action with everybody's favourite metaphor: 

"We don’t have Nazi groups either,” rationalizes board chair Alice Anne LeMay. “Gay-straight alliances are banned because they are not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.” 

Moral Debate Rule #1: Never compare anything to the Holocaust.  Ever.

And with these words, Xtra went on a crusade against the Catholic School Boards of Ontario.  They began to report that there were no Catholic GSAs in Ontario, called into question the public funding of Catholic Schools, reported on a whole bunch of other instances where the and just generally hated on the Catholics (A favourite pass-time of anybody who isn't catholic).  This led to a whole lot of public outrage, and a lot of other people hating on the Catholics.  My reaction to all of this wasn't rage so much as it was sadness.  I went to a Catholic High School and it was not like this at all.  Now, a lot of this has to do with the fact that it was a school for the arts, but my High School (which by the way, had part of its campus in the TCDSB building) was incredibly queer-positive.  We had openly gay and warmly accepted gay students, gay teachers, a GSA (Held in a classroom the TCDSB building), the principal allowed us to be out of uniform on Pink Shirt Day, and queer issues were always discussed during Respect for Life Week.  I remember one year, our school was the target of an attack by Catholic bully website "Life Site News"and a far right Catholic magazine that I have never heard of called "Catholic Insight" these inflammatory articles are journalism at its worse.  They bend the truth and sometimes tell outright lies.  Let me point out at this time that none of my teachers, gay or straight ever talked about their personal lives in great detail.

I think it's interesting to point out that while Xtra is preaching Catholic intolerance, the Catholic media is in outrage over all the queer-positive teachers.  Since both media outlets are extreme ends of the spectrum.  It makes me wonder what it's really like in Catholic schools.  I don't really know, since my experience with Catholic schools are the very inclusive Arts school that I went to and the all boys schools that I did musicals at.  Now, even secular all-boys schools have a reputation for being simultaneously homophobic and homoerotic; if you add to that mix the right-leaning beliefs of the Catholic church you have the other extreme.  I doubt that most Catholic schools are as welcoming as mine was, but I also don't think that they're all as homophobic as the boys schools were.  I wish I knew.

A last note, the GSA at my school was called "Dialogue", which maybe saved it from the School Board, since Xtra seems to have a problem with boards that don't allow groups with "Gay"in the title.  I wonder if there are any other Catholic GSAs operating under the same disguise, there probably are.

~Nice Girl

PS: Feel free to comment on this, but know that I do moderate comments. So don't even think about being a jerk.