AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON :: “I’m a trans feminine queer person in the US. Where one party’s whole election campaign has been about the extermination of me and my community… The successes I’ve experienced … I did not think possible. Now these things are happening, and it’s this weird dichotomy of being the talk of Broadway but to walk down the street after a show and feel like I could get murdered. It’s scary to walk to your show where you know you’re the star, and be like, ‘I am not safe on this ten block walk because there are people who are emboldened by this political party who are encouraging them to take all of their aggressions out on me and my community.’ I can’t believe the hype about me right now, because it’s dangerous for me to walk down the street confidently because I might attract the attention of the wrong person.” – Jinkx Monsoon

So began our pre-US election conversation with drag superstars Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme as they readied themselves to hit the road, touring their riotous annual holiday show, “The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” (click here for cities and dates.) Jinkx was referring of course to the insane trajectory her career has had post winning both her RuPaul’s Drag Race seasons: A villain on Dr. Who; breaking box-office records during her time in Chicago; starring in Little Shop of Horrors; slated to appear in concert this coming Valentine’s Day at Carnagie Hall … all juxtaposed against the reality of living life as a trans person.

The conversation wasn’t all bleak, however, the pair talked about why they are boldly taking their tour to notoriously red states (“we go where we’re needed”) and how working together has made them better all round, as well as what to expect in this year’s iteration of their universally loved holiday spectacle. Watch now:

Image credit: Jacob Ritts

The post GGN POP CULTURE :: JINKX MONSOON + BENDELACREME RETURN JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLDIAYS appeared first on TheGayGuideNetwork.com.

By Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour

Last year, Artist Jason Mraz who is non-Indigenous, declared feelings of alignment with the term, two-spirit and the teachings he received from his Indigenous* wife. He lamented that it more fully captured how he felt inside, more so than what the identity construct bisexual could ever do on its own. Everyone (myself included) was waving fingers for a good couple of days over this Mraz. Some were white-splaning “appreciation versus appropriation” narratives, while others were just outright bold in saying, “Well we won, get over it”. 

*(Indigenous has replaced Aboriginal as the umbrella term used to identify persons of First Nations, Metis and Inuit ancestry).

What the Mraz moment revealed was that layer after layer, a new, even more thinly veiled homo-nationalist and queer settler-colonial elitist veneer existed. Resultant social media moments saw assertions take what they wanted from Indigenous culture because they can. It also saw Indigenous people naming Mraz’s appropriation marked as being violent towards and excluding of the Queer-Settler body.

The latter is what happened to me when I made the assertion, that while two-spirit captures a lot of really awesome things, it inherently recognizes two-spirit people as being from here since time immemorial. Our diverse approaches to resistance and their resultant performances is a testament to Indigenous LGBTQ Elders who knew the urgency of naming a space just for Queer Indigenous people.

At a mid-90’s annual gathering for Indigenous self-identified Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) persons, our two-spirit Elders agreed on “two-spirit” as a universal name for all, and assert space under the LGBTQ umbrella. This name was visioned to create distance from Squaw, Faggot, Wagon-Burner, tranny, dyke and other harmful anthropological words like Berdache. Berdache’s root attached prostitution to our bodies, contributing to Canadian legacies of persistent colonial technologies that dehumanize Indigenous persons using sexual conquest. It was critical in that it contributed to a very specific resistance language. The naming of our unique Queer Indigenous space and place needed the ability to empower and heal in the oration of it. Two-spirit and coming into our identity means belonging to our ‘self’, family, community and nations.

The reclamation of Indigenous gender fluidity and sexual identities has not only been about our clap-back at our own Indigenous communities, but also a compassionate interruption of Church and Davie streets gay and lesbian villages that have connected us to our LGBTQ found family. It was during my time on Davie St. in Vancouver that I first heard of this magnificent word, Two-Spirit – finally something that captured both my Secwepemc community, as well as my fourth-generation English queer-settler body. 

I knew I wasn’t gay. I knew I wasn’t trans.

In the gay subcultural groups, I didn’t see myself reflected in the faces predominating my preferred haunts of that time. There was an incredible need for a name exclusive to my Indigenous Queer body to mark my journey as distinct (but not different) from LGBTQ. Distinct because two-spirit identity is about our gender and sexuality and their intersection of how we contribute humbly to our relationships to family, land, water, community, culture, children, food security, warrior-status and the cosmos. I say not different because our communities remain under state surveillance and we were all marked as deviant at one time. 

Don’t Leave Us Behind.

The plight of Indigenous people in Canada is usually viewed through poverty porn-like news channels. The average Canadian cannot name the Indigenous nation in which they now reside, let alone speak the language. The average Canadian wouldn’t be able to tell anyone much of anything beyond Native stereotypes. To the average 20-something Torontonian shop clerk, whose casual, everyday reinforcement of the extinction myth during those first hilarious encounter with my Indian Status Card (during weekly, sometimes daily retail therapy expeditions), happens without a glimmer of recognition of their immediate circumstances. 

Sarah Silverman, in one of her stand-up specials, said that if a bunch of kittens and puppies were the ones dying of AIDS in Africa, “We’d have that shit solved in a week.” How true. Imagine if Canada had reserves of kittens and puppies. Would Sarah MacLauchlan sing for us then? At present, two-spirit health is dire in so-called British Columbia (the province illegally displaces and surveille Indigenous people as it has only four small modern treaties). The lived reality for two-spirit young people whose substance use, homeless situation, and suicide ideation and completion are the highest of any LGBTQ youth group in Canada.

The Indian Wars are alive and well in Canada as well as in Canadian LGBTQ Imagination.

We’re all complicit in the hidden evils of Canadian National Imaginaries as we gain distance from Harpers 2008 apology for the Indian Residential Schools of Canada. As an Assistant Professor of Social Work and a community-based researcher with over 20 years of departures and arrivals with gay and lesbian villages, my analysis of the reality of the relationship between Indigenous and LGBTQ bodies is not great where tokenized gestures of box-checking and meme posting for optics of social justice and inclusion occur. 

While living in Kamloops, in so-called British Columbia for the past three years, during a rigorous and personal research project about themes of anti-indigenous racism in rural BC, the moment I gave my address (that just so happened to be on my Indian Reserve) during cruising sessions on the apps we use, the overwhelming amount of those moments turned into me being ghosted. My self-worth did not always escape unharmed. 

Through the dominant white gaze of colonial LGBTQ desires, we are marked through collective memory as taboo. Our bodies become exotified like our land marked for conquest. In LGBTQ historical recounts, our pre-contact community immersion and valuing of our personhood excavated and appropriated by LGBTQ advocates, as some sort of archeological evidence, like they themselves have always been here too.

Indigenous LGBTQ and two-spirit peoples have been on the frontlines since always.

We are here because we don’t have a choice of being anything other than who we are becoming. From the moment we are born we are marked by the state, documented and tracked with card and number. We unsettle all that with the fluidic ways Indigenous LGBTQ and two-spirit people perform their walk or sashay, and in some cases literally floating through this world – which is a testament to our two-spirit Ancestors.

Two-spirit holds space for us to remember our unique status as we interrupt homophobia and transphobia in our urban and reserve communities with our beauty and resiliency. It should also heart-fully remind our Settler friends of our immeasurable resiliency in the face of being the most at risk of Canadian colonialism. Two-spirit is about coming home and coming in. It’s about our interrelatedness and thus inherent responsibilities to all our relations, and that means you do too.

A Prophecy.

A favourite prophecy of mine states that when the great shift happens there will be a predominance of two-spirit people. Never before has there been a time for our LGBTQ2S community to walk as freely as we do in North America and most of the western world. I believe we are in that moment now because of those LGBTQ Elders who literally died for all of us. 

I believe this prophecy is for all of us, because it challenges us to pick up the reigns of leadership and that we are the ones who help people through. The fact that so many of us exist here now means for me that we have entered the first stages of that shift to our next expression. Onwards to a world re-matriated and the staunchest homo-patriarchal – like our “masc4masc str8-acting looking for the same” and others – can let a little flourish into their lives so we can all broaden the horizon, our collective becomings, together. 

About Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour

Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour – a two-spirit Tk’emlúpsemc and fourth generation English Settler – is nominated to the Traditional Family Governance Council for the Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc Nation, and is an appointed speaker by and for his Secwepemc Nation. He is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University and was a Lecturer for three years at Thompson Rivers University school of social work in Kamloops, BC. He specializes in Decolonizing Social Work Practice as informed by his nations teachings, and contributes (most recently as an expert witness at Canada’s MMIW Inquiry hearings held in Iqaluit, Nunavut) to the ongoing issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women’s, girls, trans and two-spirit people’s. Jeffrey’s classroom inextricably links land and water defence to social work research, practice and pedagogy. He has been chosen to deliver a forthcoming Keynote address at Montreal’s annual two-spirit conference for 2019. 

The post Queer Politics :: Two-Spirit, The Canadian LGBTQ Nation at Large, and Veneers appeared first on TheGayGuideNetwork.com.

Earlier this week, colleague and broadcast legend Arlene Bynon had GGN Founder, Publisher Shaun Proulx on her daily news analysis show (The Arlene Bynon Show) on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167. (Last March 2018, Bynon and Proulx broke the Sean Cribbin / Bruce McArthur story on Global News.

Bynon invited Proulx onto her show to talk about the recent Pride Toronto vote in which they narrowly decided to exclude Toronto Police from marching in this years’ Toronto Pride parade. Bynon opened the show with a clip from Mayor John Tory, which Proulx hadn’t heard and left him incensed.

How does what Major John Tory said make YOU feel? 

Proulx also has a bold statement for anyone calling for the resignation of Pride Toronto Executive Director, Olivia Nuamah. 

Hear the entire interview below:

The post Queer Politics :: Shaun Proulx on Pride Toronto’s Vote to Exclude Police appeared first on TheGayGuideNetwork.com.

Last weekend the Ontario PC party met for their annual convention where they passed a contentious resolution that is essentially a slap in the face for human rights in Ontario.

That resolution reads:

Policy resolution R4 – Education and Community Safety
Proposed by Tanya Granic Allen (Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound)

Be it resolved that an Ontario PC Party recognizes “gender identity theory” for what it is, namely, I highly controversial, and unscientific “liberal ideology”; and, as such, that an Ontario PC government will remove the teaching and promotion of “gender identity theory” from Ontario schools and its curriculum.

Here is the resolution just passed by @OntarioPCParty #ONPoli pic.twitter.com/Km2y9W9rkb

— Travis Dhanraj (@Travisdhanraj) November 17, 2018

It’s worth your time to read this article and watch the videos (apologies in advance for the stress and frustration this may cause): Ontario PC Party passes resolution to debate recognition of gender identity

What the Hell do we Do Now?

Admittedly it’s hard to know where to start. I could break down the resolution and explain its flaws. I could dive into the plentiful amount of scholarly research on gender identity theory that can easily be found with a simple Google search. So much for gender identity theory being unscientific – apparently the the Ontario PC Party has never used Google.

This is a game that ideological, religious conservatives, and the far right love to play. They will say something like, “research has shown…”, but they either don’t tell you what research they are referring to, or they ignore the fact that there is far more research that proves their point is false. This has become the Trump phenomenon south of our border where nearly everything he says is a lie, and the more he exaggerates the lie, the more people believe it.

This is what is now trickling into Conservative Canadian politics, and we have to be careful to keep watch on what they say and what they do. With the rise of Andrew Sheer and Doug Ford populism literally blowing their wads of conservatism all over each other, thinking that “This can’t happen here” is not only ignorant, it’s downright dangerous.

We know where this can lead…

Did you notice the title of the resolution? Since when is gender identity a community safety issue? I can only imagine a bunch of non-binary gender identified individuals spreading their ideologies and corrupting the minds of white, conservative children. Oh wait, that does happen! It’s called Drag Queens reading to kids at the Toronto Reference Library during Pride Month!

Pride doesn't end with Pride Month, this summer join us for Drag Queen Storytimes across the city. Celebrate literacy and diversity with books, songs, and lots of laughs! https://t.co/rpuD5P231O pic.twitter.com/tkQ8rxjj7m

— Toronto Public Library (@torontolibrary) July 9, 2018

Gender identity “theory” is a theory, it’s not an ideology.

Conservatives are trying to confuse the issue. Calling gender identity theory a “liberal ideology” is simply ignorant. The only ideology in question is what’s at the core of Policy Resolution R4: there are only two sexes and two genders (and some believe that gender and sex are the same).

Saying something that you don’t agree with is an ideology is illogical and wrong. We know why Ford is doing this, to appease his voter base that doesn’t affirm the rights of LGBTQ+ people. This is a base of people who have a lot of power at the moment – and they have their party of choice with a majority hold on the Ontario Legislature. For this reason alone we must remain vigilant and highly critical of everything the Ford party does.

In the case of Resolution R4, even though the Party backtracked and stated that the resolution is a “debate item for next year’s convention”, and not policy, that DOES mean they will be preparing. They will be fighting, petitioning, strong-arming, fund-raising, and running around like Reverend Lovejoy’s wife from the Simpson’s screaming, “Somebody think of the children!”

Let me be perfectly clear: the Ontario PC Party has officially taken a transgressive stance against transgender rights.

This is a very slippery slope towards violating human rights in Canada. And by the way, how arrogant of the Party to do this during Trans Awareness Month!

Lastly, making the statement that the Party will remove the teaching and promotion of gender identity theory from Ontario schools and its curriculum is a form of ideology in itself, because,

“An ideology is a collection of normative beliefs and values that an individual or group holds for other than purely epistemic reasons.” – Source

To be fair – and might I add much more correctly – we can say that,

The Ontario PC Party has passed a resolution, that is a highly controversial, unscientific, “conservative, religious ideology”.

There is still hope at the end of the rainbow…

But we can’t rest on hope alone. Setbacks happen amidst progress. While an Ontario PC Party majority surely begs the question of the paradox of “progressive” next to “conservative”, we need to speak out louder than those who are against us. We need to educate. We need to be more visible, and even more welcoming than before.

If ever there was a time to flaunt it, that show began the minute Ford won a majority this past June.

Darren Stehle, GGN Editor

The post SOCIETY :: How to Fight Doug Ford and the Ontario PC Party as LGBTQ+ appeared first on TheGayGuideNetwork.com.

By Ishmael Bishop

Since its origin in the late 1960s, Pride has referenced a coalition of grassroots organizers, community members, activists, performers, sex workers, and gender and sexual subversives who come together to celebrate the diversity within the LGBTQ+ community. Marsha P. Johnson was an architect to some of the earliest iterations of Pride and because of her resilience in the face of bigotry and discrimination, Pride lives to this day.

The original Pride was a riot incited outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1969. Some historians consider the Stonewall Riot the spark to the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Others uphold Stonewall as a symbol of resistance to the social and political discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community and effectuated by the police.

While Pride proclaims itself to be many things to many people – including the harbinger of inclusion and civil rights in this country – Pride continues to provoke contradictions within those who have historically remained on the margins.

In 2015, a dramatic reproduction of the 1969 New York City rebellion titled Stonewall, directed by Roland Emmerich, was heavily criticized in the media for whitewashing history. Several online writers pointed to the film’s numerous erasures and its predominantly white cast as epic failures. In particular, protagonist Danny Winters (played by Jeremy Irvine) reflected the embodiment of white, cisgender queer politics – the exact antithesis of Marsha P. Johnson, who many allege threw the brick that sparked the riot.

In 2017, the Netflix documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson by David France, attempted to also recount the story of Johnson including her frontline participation in the original Stonewall riot. Following its debut, however, the documentary came under fire when France was accused of stealing research from activist, filmmaker, and writer Reina Gossett. In an op-ed, Gossett, a black transwoman and co-director of the film Happy Birthday Marsha!, takes particular issue with the lack of resources available to transwomen of color to create projects that celebrate members of their communities.

Gossett superbly highlights the contradiction between visibility, a long touted benefit of Pride, and the intensifying violence against trans people. She writes,

“It is more important now more than ever for trans and gender nonconforming people to be the architects of our own narratives. While trans visibility is at an all-time high, with trans people increasingly represented in popular culture, violence against us has also never been higher. The push for visibility without it being tied to a demand for our basic needs being met often leaves us without material resources or tangible support, and exposed to more violence and isolation.”

As Pride draws near, it is crucial that we learn and understand our history through the eyes of those who have struggled through it.

Johnson, a revolutionary black transwoman, sex worker, and drag queen, was often overlooked and cast out of mainstream LGBTQ organizing because of her gender identity, race, HIV+ status, and occupation. During her lifetime, Johnson suffered many abuses in both her personal and professional lives, all of which can be linked to her position as a black transwoman. What is even more unfortunate is that Johnson’s untimely death at 46 years of age remains unsolved, illustrating how the mainstream LGBTQ movement prioritizes some, in fact, defines itself by the death of a select handful, but certainly not all.

Johnson’s work toward liberation is well documented.

Following the events at Stonewall, Johnson joined the Gay Liberation Front with friend Sylvia Rivera. The GLF made it their mission to to improve the material conditions for LGBTQ citizens by eradicating homophobic laws and city ordinances. A 1970s newspaper titled Come Out stated that, “the Gay Liberation Front welcomes any gay person, regardless of sex, race, age or social behavior. Though some other gay organizations may be embarrassed by drags or transvestites, GLF believes that we should accept all of our brothers and sisters unconditionally”. Under this banner, Johnson and Rivera found a home.

In June of 1970, the first of the GLF marches took place in New York City. These marches, ones that Rivera and Johnson had hands in organizing, would develop exponentially and become what we in 2018 call Pride. That same year, Johnson and Rivera formed the Street Transvestite (now Transgender) Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a community organization that provided services to homeless LGBTQ youth in select U.S. cities and England. In the 1980s, Johnson became an outspoken activist with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) with whom she protested on Wall Street against the inaccessibility of new HIV/AIDS medication.

Marsha P. Johnson’s engagement in the earliest iterations of Pride, and yet her struggle to sustain housing and mental health care, astutely demonstrates the contradiction inherent to participating in a movement that is ignorant of your humanity.

What is important to realize is that Johnson’s work transcended race, class, and gender in ways that the larger and whiter LGBTQ movement continues to not.

Gossett remarks,

“So much of what Marsha had to deal with remains a reality for many of us. Marsha’s history has helped me make plain the connections between the historical erasure of trans women of color from the LGBT movement, and contemporary forms of anti-black transphobic violence happening today.”

The Pride of Johnson’s era was a protest that sought to mitigate the woeful conditions that impacted New York City’s most vulnerable. Pride, at the time, was an opportunity to vociferously advocate on behalf of those who were most directly harmed by state power, the police, and the wider anti-LGBTQ infrastructure.

In the early 1990s, Pride began to coalesce into more or less what is today – primarily a celebratory event equipped with corporate sponsorships, concerts, party venues, and speed dating. Nevertheless, Pride remains a fertile site to demand political action. In 2017, the group “No Justice No Pride” – a collective of activists based in the Washington, DC who exist to “end the LGBT movement’s complicity with systems of oppression,” including the DC Metropolitan and New York City police departments – announced their public demands during the Capital Pride parade by halting festivities for approximately 90 minutes.

“We deserve to celebrate Pride without being forced alongside the Police who kill us,” said Angela Peoples, one of the participants in a No Justice No Pride statement. “Pride should be a haven for the entire LGBTQ community. The Capital Pride Board has shown who it’s prioritizing. No Justice No Pride is for everyone who has previously been excluded and for a different vision of what this event could and should be.” The “haven” that Peoples alludes to is shattered by the “Police who kill us,” an observation that keenly emphasizes the contradiction of Pride – contradictions that Johnson and her comrades were likely to have experienced on a daily basis.

Pride is a time to appreciate how far we have come as a community out of a place of abject cruelty and adversity to where we are now.

Clearly, there is still much to accomplish in the fight for equality and anti-discrimination. As Micah Bazant writes, “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us,” which eloquently encapsulates the persistence of Johnson’s activism. Her life’s work teaches me that it is meaningless to take pride in shallow wins that improve the lives of some while so many others continue to suffer in silence.

Pride is not squarely an event for gay, cisgender, white men and women to enjoy and feel comfortable participating in. Rather, Pride is a rebirth of political energy. Marsha P. Johnson’s riveting model is one that I plan to follow during the upcoming month of Pride – one that I reckon you might as well.

“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.”

Ishmael Bishop is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He identifies as a black queer writer and editor who’s written for Mask and Scalawag magazines. More of his work can be read here. Contact Ishmael here.

This post was originally published on Th-Ink Queerly.

The post HISTORY :: You Can’t Have Pride Without Marsha P. Johnson appeared first on TheGayGuideNetwork.com.

After almost 20 years of hatred and violence towards gays attending drag costume balls at Halloween in Toronto, gay journal, Body Politic, published an editorial in 1980 that put its well-heeled foot down to stop the insanity:

The events of October 31 are a civic disgrace, and should be a source of shame to every citizen of the city. Every citizen, every elected official should share every gay person’s dismay at having to face, each year, a night of humiliation and hate. A night that is passed over in silence, that has drawn no criticism, no condemnation, that has not moved one single elected official to say ‘This is appalling and disgraceful. This must be stopped.’

In the 1960s and 70s, Yonge Street, on the blocks between College and Wellesley Streets, was home to two gay bars, the Parkside Tavern and the St. Charles Tavern. On Halloween night, the only socially permissible night of the year where gays could openly express themselves in costume, these queer bars drew two very different groups: drag queens and large, hostile crowds  armed with eggs and ink, fists on the ready.

“Halloween is on its way to becoming a confrontation between a large gay subculture and a city that pretends it doesn’t exist,” wrote Hugh Brewster, a Body Politic contributor at the time.

A Torontoist article by Jamie Bradburn explains that outside of Halloween back in the day, “it wasn’t unusual for men in drag to be hauled by police down to Cherry Beach and beaten up”, and this, he writes, “gave rise to costume balls on October 31 which allowed participants to publicly display their sexuality. The parties could be lavish affairs—during Halloween 1969, the August Club at 530 Yonge offered a ball with prizes, buffet, and champagne for $12.50 a head.”

Mark Henderson, an actor/model who experienced the Yonge Street scenes first-hand, explains that “back in the late 70s, it was illegal for men to be out on the streets in drag, and they were arrested. At Halloween, it was a blood bath.”

Bradburn notes that by the late 1970s, the spectacular balls continued to draw angry crowds on the streets, described by one police superintendent as “a sad-looking bunch” that stood around and threw eggs at each other, while the 300 drag queens at the St. Charles ball “were inside having a great time”.

According to BlogTO, during the 1970s, “the epicentre of the [gay] community shifted to Church [Street], as businesses found more affordable spaces on this street. During this time, more businesses became gay-owned”, and the one-block gay migration from Yonge to Church Street began. Gays and lesbians now had apartments to live in (the City Park complex was built just off of Church in the mid-1950s), and the community was finding its way in the new neighbourhood.

Then AIDS hit.

Henderson believes that it was the rise of HIV/AIDS that moved the gay community into what would become Toronto’s  gay village – now gays were feared and further marginalized by “the gay disease”. Gays tried not to be seen and kept to themselves. “There was a 20′ radius around drag queens, because presumably, they were all infected,” he says. “People felt that they could still throw things at the queens, but they wouldn’t touch them.”

He remembers the hatred, the jeering, the hurled objects, and the violence toward drag queens and gays at the time, and recalls that by the early 1990s, the spectacle of Halloween for adults was but dry tinder waiting for a spark to ignite it.

Wildfire

At least in Toronto in the very early 1990s, people didn’t go out in costume at Halloween. Henderson remembers that the thought of grown men in costumes was “creepy”. Sometimes it was okay for women to wear [sexy sexist] costumes, but for men costumes were “frowned down upon”.

One year, he, with his friend Cheyenne Lee who hatched the plan, decided one year to defy convention and go out and enjoy themselves in full Halloween disguises. Halloween was on a weekend that year and they went out three nights in a row as Dracula (Henderson) and his dead showgirl girlfriend (Lee). They went to neighbourhood haunts like the Artful Dodger pub on Isabella and ended up at Woody’s, a popular gay bar at Church and Wellesley Streets, but not much was happening there.

Out on the street, they looked across to Crews, another bar, and decided to go over. As Torontonians do, they J-walked across the road, and as they did, an oncoming car flashed its lights at them so their costumes could be better seen. The car approached slowly then stopped just in time for Lee and Henderson to lay on the hood and make scary faces into the wind shield.

“People loved it!” Henderson remembers. “A car coming south also wanted to be a part of it, so we laid on the hood and gave that car the same treatment. Cheyenne was whipping up the street. Drag queens started to notice and came out onto the street. The police were there but they didn’t shut it down. It was the perfect storm.”

The following year, the 519 Community Centre got a permit and paid for a street party and closed off several blocks for the costume parades, and it’s never been the same since. Last year, 30,000 people came out to see the spectacle of Church Street at Halloween.

“Something got unlocked and it didn’t stop,” Henderson explains. “The costume businesses on Yonge Street would never have survived if it hadn’t been for us. We all woke up when it was really dark – the colours came back.”

But the bonfire of the Church Street Halloween spirit could not have been ignited without a spark. Henderson says that Lee lived and died Halloween (indeed, she named her son, Spider), she had the ability to make things fun and clean things up.

“It wasn’t popular to have gay friends in the 80s,” Henderson says of his late friend. “She was the Kathy Griffin of the day. She got the jokes in life, she lit the fire. Cheyenne was the spark that lit the flame of the Halloween tinder.”

By Leah Morrigan, GGN Editor

The post HALLOWEEN HISTORY :: Eggings, Intolerance, Acceptance appeared first on TheGayGuideNetwork.com.

In this supposedly enlightened age, there are always a few people who seem to want to hold us back. In this case, we’re talking about cake and the “right” – and we use this term loosely – of business owners to discriminate based on their own religious beliefs. On September 8, 2017, the Department of Justice sided with the Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for the wedding of a same-sex couple, citing his own religious beliefs.

This case is about much more than cake. It’s about what this ruling could mean for individuals throughout the United States.

The Case Thus Far

Back in the summer of 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins chose Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado to bake their wedding cake to celebrate their upcoming nuptials. Jack Phillips, the store’s owner, refused to accept their order, stating that his store policy — based on his religious beliefs — was to deny service to same-sex couples.

Colorado law states that it is illegal for businesses to refuse service based on race, sex, marital status, or sexual orientation, so the couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division (CCRD). The CCRD found that the cakeshop had indeed violated the law. In spite of Phillips’ appeal of the decision, the shop was ordered to change its company policies and provide comprehensive staff training to ensure they remain in compliance with state law.

However just last month, after being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Justice back-pedaled on the statements of discrimination made by state-level courts in Colorado, and sided with the bakery in their discrimination of the couple.

The Supreme Court Ruling

Phillips claimed that making a cake is a form of creative expression, and, as such, it is protected under his First Amendment rights. Compelling him to create a cake for a same sex couple in violation of his religious beliefs, he argues, constitutes an intrusion on the “individual freedom of mind” that is protected by the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Both President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions say this means that, if a business owner wanted to, they could legally put a sign in their window stating that they don’t serve gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender individuals — even if their own state has laws against such discrimination.

What Does This Mean?

This ruling sets a dangerous precedent for businesses and for LGBTI+ individuals across the United States. While it might not allow people to discriminate based on an individual’s race, it allows or at least doesn’t prevent discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, or even religion. It might not be long before we start seeing signs in windows where stores refuse to sell to women, Muslims, or transgender individuals, for example.

In essence, what this ruling is saying is that if a business can be classified as a “form of creative expression,” the business owner can discriminate at will. Creative expression is such a broad term, though, that it’s nearly impossible to estimate the scope of this impact. Dressmakers, bakers, and florists, certainly, but this could be expanded to cover nearly every public service industry, if you stretch the definition thinly enough.

This is just the first step toward a very scary version of the U.S. that no one wants to see come to fruition. The Supreme Court might not think much of the First Amendment, but it is something that is still important to so many Americans — who will fight for it.

Whether you bake cakes or assemble cars, religion shouldn’t give you the right to discriminate against anyone, no matter what the Supreme Court says.

By Kate Harveston, political journalist and blogger

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It has recently become public knowledge that the 2020 U.S. census will not include questions about sexual orientation. While this might not immediately strike some as a high-profile decision, the gravity of the American government’s choice not to take an interest in quantifying LGBTI+ representation has caused a stir in the LGBTI+ community, and rightfully so.

While Trump’s administration has taken the stance that such questions are inappropriate and overly personal, LGBTI+ rights advocates see things differently. To those members of a community still fighting to be heard and respected, the government’s unwillingness to recognize their growing numbers and role in America is truly alarming.

A Shift in Regime

The news about 2020 census questions comes less than a year into President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had his supporters and critics like any president, but among those who endorse Obama’s works, the advancement of progressive causes is held up as one of his greatest achievements.

The LGBTI+ community in particular made great strides under Obama, most notably earning the federal right to marriage. In 2016, at the end of Obama’s administration, more than 75 Congress members wrote to the Census Bureau to request that questions about sexual orientation be added to the American Community Survey. It is exactly that request that has been denied under Trump.

Has History Repeated Itself?

From a rhetorical perspective, the obvious issue with this decision is that it signifies the government’s withdrawal of support for the progressivist movement.

A first-class citizen doesn’t expect to entertain any more government involvement in their life than another first-class citizen, because they enjoy all the benefits that come along with that status. Hence, government involvement in the lives of these citizens is seen as a nuisance. However, the same cannot be said for minority populations like African-Americans and the LGBTI+ community.

For a minority citizen to advance beyond their oppressed status requires attention. Take, for example, the works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the advancement of African-American civil rights.

Many scenes from the civil rights movement are turbulent and even tinged with violence, but without drawing attention to itself and pushing the boundaries, the movement would never have made advances. Civil rights remain a pertinent topic of conversation today, thanks in part to the endorsement of the U.S. government, and there is still much work to be done.

In the famous 1954 court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the government moved to strike down the “separate but equal” doctrine established a half century earlier in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Some LGBTI+ activists hold that this current census committee choice smacks of the old separate-but-equal doctrine.

Are LGBTQI+ People Getting Separate but Equal Treatment?

Much like Plessy v. Ferguson, a historic court case in 1996 seems to have set the tone of rights relations for LGBTI+ people. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court established that separate protection under the law was unconstitutional, but in the defining case in the gay rights conversation, Lawrence v. Texas, it seems justices left some wiggle room that is still being taken advantage of.

Lawrence v. Texas expanded on the outcome of the 1996 case of Romer v. Evans, in which the court upheld that certain types of discrimination against gays, for example in employment and housing matters, were unconstitutional. When John Lawrence and Tyrone Gardner challenged the charges of sodomy brought against them, the court provided protection under the statue of their right to privacy, not equal protection under the law.

Trump’s Empty Promise

In the years since Lawrence v. Texas, the LGBTI+ community has advanced its cause a great deal and earned acceptance in many places where it was once shunned. The Obama administration showed commitment to continuing this progress, but now with Trump’s people choosing to turn a blind eye, there is fear that government assistance is going away.

LGBTI+ Americans can’t fight for their rights, or even make use of the ones they have, if the government doesn’t infer that they exist. If the government keeps going in the direction it is, we could see confusion and lack of resources when it comes to the processes of same-sex marriage, consumerism rights and even divorce.

In choosing not to include information about gays, lesbians, transgender people and other members of this substantial community in the census survey, the message Trump’s administration sends is not one of respect for privacy. It is the message that you are no longer considered important.

In situations like this, if the government cannot uphold what is right from a moral perspective, enemies of the movement will seize the chance to spread hate and misunderstanding. That is the real loss here, that even while claiming to be a champion of “free speech,” Trump would rather turn a blind eye than risk insulting the bigots who got him elected.

By Kate Harveston, journalist and political blogger

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