PM’s formal apology to persecuted Canadians is about time: city activist

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/05/2017 (3093 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A report Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will formally apologize this fall to thousands of Canadians persecuted by the federal government because of their sexuality is long overdue, says a Winnipeg human rights activist.

“We wish that they’d done this long ago. People lost jobs and homes and suffered substantially,” said Chris Vogel, who, with his partner, Rich North, put gay marriage on the national map in 1974.

The apology is expected to happen in the House of Commons after a summer of consulting with advocates who have been demanding an apology and compensation for those — mainly gay men — persecuted because of their sexuality, the Globe and Mail reported Wednesday.

In September, the Free Press reported the Trudeau government said it was considering a national apology for people who were imprisoned, fired from jobs or persecuted because of their sexual orientation. The government was reportedly working with Egale — a national LGBTTQ* human rights organization — on the details and scope of such an apology, which was expected to come as early as last fall.

Vogel said the apology was to include pardons for men convicted of gross indecency because they had consensual gay sex.

“Some convicted in the earlier years were labelled dangerous sex offenders,” said Vogel. “I expect there are people hiding the fact that they were classified as dangerous sexual offenders,” he said Wednesday.

“I expect a lot of them will be coming out of the woodwork privately to have that taken off their records. I think we’re going to hear about a lot of applications for pardons.”

Over the years, the 70-year-old Vogel said he’s heard about men in this province who were unable to pass criminal record background checks for volunteer jobs because they were convicted of having sex with another consenting man.

He recalls a time when the federal government had “a very elaborate fruit machine” it used to try and detect whether or not someone was homosexual. It tried to measure a subject’s physical response to certain images to determine whether or not they were attracted to men. Its researchers gathered data they believed pointed to someone’s sexual orientation, he said.

“They thought that men who wore short-sleeved shirts and drove white cars, that made them gay.”

Right now, Vogel said, he and North are still campaigning for their rights in Manitoba.

“Our big fight is with the province,” said Vogel. “We’re still after them to register our marriage.”

The couple has complained to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission about how their marriage, which happened 30 years before same-sex marriage was legalized in this province in September 2004, isn’t recognized. On Monday, they learned an adjudicator has been appointed to rule on their complaint.

Vogel said the apology from Trudeau won’t help him or his partner personally but should impact those directly affected — and Canadians in general.

“It probably affects public opinion and reminds people of the bad things that have happened and that persecuting a minority because they don’t like the colour of their eyes is wrong.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca