Marriage is more important than sex
February 2003
Canada's most famous, courageous and smart out politician is such a jerk. Oooo Svend Robinson makes me angry.
Valentine's Day is a day for lovers, and gay men and lesbians have always made the point that it excludes same-sex relationships. So the day before V-day, Svend introduced a bill in Parliament to allow marriage. Charming. Lovely. Cute.
But I spent a week in Calgary over Christmas, discovering the cold hard truth that Canada's laws still allow for the arrest of men who have consensual sex with other men. Appalling, isn't it?
Now tell me this, Svend: what is your priority here?
Marriage is well and good. But we have 13 men in Calgary, more than half of them married, alone and in hysterics. They were arrested in a December 12 police raid of the city's only bathhouse, Goliath's. Charged with being found-ins in a common bawdy house.
These men surely can't talk to their wives, their friends or their families. And they are prohibited by law, by their bail conditions, to return to Goliath's bathhouse, the scene of their alleged crime -- the place where they could connect with the other arrested men, the men who could share in their fears and give some understanding and support.
The gay community is concentrated on getting marriage rights.
But what about these men? You may not go to the tubs (er, I certainly don't -- grin). But bathhouses are an essential part of gay male culture. When gay sex meant 14 years in jail only 33 years ago, men had no choice but to cruise quietly in spaces where they would not be arrested or beaten up. Bathhouses were an integral part of that (though at the turn of the 20th century, cruising in a bathhouse meant paying off the manager).
The bathhouses have evolved into gay-owned community spaces, where gay men can meet and share information -- safer sex, gay bowling leagues, last night's Buffy episode. A place to make new family and new friends. Christmas Day in the tubs is an astonishingly wonderful thing, where men whose "real" families don't want them around can spend a day together. And have sex -- for fun, or to make some human connection in an alienating world.
Bathhouses are important. And Canada's bawdy house laws make having sex in a bathhouse illegal. Not because of prostitution, which certainly may happen in the tubs, although money rarely changes hands between the customers. Some bathhouses even ban hustlers. But rather because police consider the sex that happens there to be "indecent."
We have a situation where gay sex is officially "indecent" -- illegal. A law in the year 2003 which says that gay sex is gross.
Through sheer chutzpah -- and in Toronto, through a bit of riot back in 1981 -- gay men have convinced most police officers in Canada to turn a blind eye. But every couple of years, some cop has the bright idea to smash into a bathhouse, filled with vulnerable naked men. Round 'em up and arrest them. (In Toronto in 1981, one man said he heard a cop wishing that the shower nozzles in one bathhouse had been connected to poison gas, like the ones in World War II concentration camps.)
We have a bunch of men in Calgary desperately trying to avoid criminal records for having gay sex. We have staff people charged with an even more serious crime, keeping a common bawdy house, where they could end up in jail.
And Svend Robinson wants gay marriage.
When I spoke to him a few weeks ago, he said, "I have called for the repeal of the bawdy house law for as long as I have been in political life." But he couldn't do anything, he said: he's not his party's justice critic. And no one was pushing for changes in the bawdy house law, he added. Political change comes from lobbying. And not, apparently, to react to an injustice.
Then on February 13 he brought forward a private member's bill to allow same-sex marriage.
In essence, Svend -- out for 15 years, a role model for many of us -- is saying: Screw our culture, screw those guys arrested in Calgary. Gimme gay marriage.
Get the law which criminalizes gay sex off the books. Then worry about gay marriage.
ADDENDUM: No longer a member of Parliament, Robinson has this month called the attainment of same-sex marriage the elimination of "the final barrier to full equality for gay and lesbian people." Meanwhile, all but one of the petrified found-ins in Calgary went to court and have paid their dues to society for their crimes. Charges were dropped against the few who fought: Their lives were destroyed by stress, and they spent a small fortune in legal bills.