Public Education

Title slide from Can We Talk? A Slide Show on Myths About Gay Males and Lesbians

Addressing Homophobia

From its creation, CLGRO addressed homophobia as a means of furthering the gay liberation movement. The more the public was aware of the harm in stigmatizing homosexuality, the easier it would be to pass legislation to protect the rights of queer people, and the safer living as a queer person would become. During the thirty-five years of its operation, CLGRO produced numerous forms of materials discussing homophobia as a tool for educating the public. As part of strategies to make legislative and social progress, members of CLGRO met with public officials, held information sessions, and recorded the slide-show presentation Can We Talk? addressing common myths about lesbians and gay men. 

Project Affirmation and CLGRO's final report, Systems Failure: A Report on the Experiences of Sexual Minorities in Ontario's Health-Care and Social-Services Systems

Project Affirmation

In 1991, CLGRO recognized the need to identify the extent of support from Canadian healthcare and social service systems provided to queer and trans people.¹ Health and Welfare Canada awarded CLGRO $450,000 to create Project Affirmation, funding the province-wide survey. ²Systems Failure, Project Affirmation’s final report detailed the responses of 1,233 2SLGBTQ+ Ontarians, outlining the areas where the healthcare and social service systems let them down.

The final report contained recommendations for federal and provincial governments, boards of education, healthcare and social service providers, professional associations and post-secondary institutions, employers and the private sector, and 2SLGBTQ+ community groups to improve their quality of care. This was one of the first official reports that highlighted the extent of neglect and malpractive towards Ontario's 2SLGBTQ+ community.

CLGRO Backgrounder on Paedophilia and Bill C-128

"Young People and Sex" leaflet, written by Forum 128 (a national research project on the Canadian sex panic), funded and distributed by CLGRO

Censorship, Porn, Paedophilia

Whilst CLGRO was campaigning for relationship recognition, conservatives were heavily retaliating with their own inflammatory, hateful, anti-gay campaigns. The public, the media, and the government became increasingly concerned in matters of morality. In 1993, Bill C-128 was passed, making the possession of written or visual materials containing child pornography illegal. CLGRO, concerned about how the law would be used to harm the LGBTQ+ community, released a backgrounder that warned, “It is fairly obvious, though, that the carrying out of this law will not be equitable. It is intended to be used against paedophiles with the happy optional extra of catching lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals in the net.”³ The coalition stated that homophobes commonly used paedophilia to attack queer people, arguing that accepting homosexuality would also mean accepting other sexual deviancy like child molestation and bestiality.⁴

Around the same time, CLGRO released a leaflet, “Young People and Sex,” informing the public how Bill C-128 could affect them (“the old obscenity law (section 163) is still in effect, banning the ‘undue exploitation of sex.’ You can be charged under both the new and the old laws”).⁵ According to CLGRO coordinator Tom Warner, many within the community felt that CLGRO’s criticism of the law would confirm the media’s portrayal of gays as paedophiles.⁶ The coalition may have viewed the new law as a continuation of the Ontario government’s moral crusades that inevitably ended in the violent policing of queer people. There were concerns that police would arrest queer people under the claim that materials they owned included people who appeared under the age of consent. 

CLGRO, along with the Homophile Association of London Ontario (HALO), were vocal critics of Project Guardian, a London Police campaign against an alleged child pornography ring. Project Guardian, in solely prioritizing cases between men and young boys, demonstrated an underlying purpose of associating child molestation with queerness. After thorough investigation, an official inquiry proved the child pornography ring never existed, and the main suspect had been in possession of documentaries, mainstream American films, and commercially available pornography.⁷

1998 edition of The Rainbow Book

Community Outreach

Though CLGRO was a province-wide organization, it was largely based in Toronto, where it was founded. With an office in Toronto, steering meetings throughout the year in various Ontarian cities, and upwards of 20 member groups across the province, the coalition’s structure was somewhat decentralized. Early on, members voiced concerns that CLGRO was too heavily concentrated on the LGBTQ+ community of Toronto. To remedy this, CLGRO hired Robin Hardy as their official grassroots organizer and recognized community outreach as a top priority.⁸ Later, in partnership with Project Affirmation and the 519 Church Street Community Center, CLGRO co-published The Rainbow Book: An Ontario Directory of Community Services for Lesbians, Gay Men, Bisexuals, and Transgendered People.

The Rainbow Book was meant to mitigate the lack of community support for queer and trans communities highlighted by Project Affirmation’s Systems Failure report. For a more public-facing outreach project, CLGRO worked with the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (the precursor of The ArQuives) and the Toronto Historical Board to curate an exhibit of lesbian and gay histories in 1995. The “Pass it On!” exhibit was not only displayed at the Toronto Historical Board, but also in the Lobby of the Toronto Board of Education Center, and toured around secondary schools for a year.⁹