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“WHEREAS lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women are vital contributors to all and various communities in Kingston; and
WHEREAS lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women continue to face social intolerance and systemic barriers in these same communities;
and
WHEREAS lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women work to redress these injustices and support healthy, strong communities:”
From the proclamations made on pride parade day from 1995
The many materials located here, documenting queer history, show the rich and varied nature of the Queer history of Kingston. Despite Kingston’s size and the few visible queer institutions, the archival materials collected show a little-documented history of Kingston’s gay community, marked by personal pain, hate and homophobia, queer organizing, collective activism, legislation, and the growth of a now flourishing pride movement. Marney McDiarmid, during the course of research for her undergraduate and graduate theses, found several of the documents in this collection. You can read Marney’s graduate thesis about gay life in Kingston from World War II to 1980 based on oral histories of members of Kingston’s queer community.
A number of the documents deal with the development of Pride celebrations in Kingston. Public celebrations began in June 1986, with a “Lesbian and Gay Awareness Week,” when city council denied endorsement as well as the request for a modest $100 grant for funding the events for the third year in a row. It was not until 1992, after years of speeches and requests to city council, that pride celebrations were officially endorsed by city council. In 1993, then-mayor Helen Cooper read the official proclamation for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Pride Day in Kingston. Since 1986, events have focused increasingly on Pride rather than awareness or education. June is now officially Pride month in the city of Kingston, while June 29th is worldwide Gay pride day.
Over the years, queer issues have come to be increasingly present in mainstream media. Collected here are many newspaper articles documenting a huge range of queer issues, from the Queen’s University Journal, the Kingston Whig-Standard, other mainstream Canadian newspapers, and independent press, including Out Inside, a Kingston newspaper for the queer community. Coverage ranges from the success of pride events, to some of the difficulties faced in overcoming stigma which come to the surface during Pride celebrations, as well as personal accounts of homophobia, anti-homophobia letters and exposes on ‘straight privilege’. A number of newspaper articles herein also document the other side of the story – homophobia and hate from the homophobe’s perspective. For example, an article appearing in the Whig-Standard in 1981 outlines the Christian basis for seeing homosexual acts as sins and homosexuality as a threat to the moral foundation of life. An article from the Whig-Standard ten years later, discusses the work and perspective of an activist trying to push sexual education in schools back in a more conservative and heterosexist direction. Other articles point to the extremes of hate and discrimination as they report on anti-gay violent hate crimes occurring in Canada. The media coverage exposes occurrences of hate literature in Kingston and elsewhere, and reports on the development of legislation to criminalize sexual-orientation-based hate literature. The historical media documents found here tell of hatred and discrimination on the one hand, and of the successes and development of the queer liberation movement on the other.
Queer organizing has been an essential aspect of the queer liberation movement in Kingston and elsewhere. In Kingston, a long-standing and very active organization that you will come across repeatedly in these documents is the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Pride Committee. Another important Kingston Queer organization is the Queen’s Homophile Association, started in 1973, which later became the Queen’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transidentified Association. The Homophile Association, and all of its subsequent incarnations was active in a number of ways on Queen’s campus and within the greater Kingston community, including providing support for LGBT students, working on anti-homophobia education, and sponsoring a series of articles about Queer issues in the Queen’s Journal. The Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario (CLGRO), is an organization “working towards feminism and gay and lesbian and gay liberation by engaging in public struggle for full human rights and by strengthening cooperative networks for lesbian and gay activism” (CLGRO membership leaflet, no date). They have been active in Kingston and presented an award to a Kingston activist, Nancy Tatham, whose name appears throughout the documents collected here. More information about the CLGRO can be found on their website: www.web.net/clgro/. The Lesbian and Gay Association – Kingston has also been active in Kingston, in particular, over the years, they have pressured the Queen’s undergraduate student government, the Alma Mater Society, to improve Orientation Week for gay/lesbian students, to remove hate and heterosexism from sanctioned activities and to provide opportunities for recourse when discrimination did indeed happen. There has also been a Lesbian and Gay Parents group, a queer youth group - Outright Youth in Kingston, and a Kingston chapter of Queer Nation. A 1986 document located in this archive outlines some of the organizations serving the queer community at the time, and the Queen’s Human Rights Office’s Positive Space website provides information and some links to contemporary Queer organizations in Kingston (www.queensu.ca/humanrights/2Positive_Space_Program.htm).
Organizing in the Kingston Queer community has led to a diversity of activities, many of which can be learnt about through the materials in this archive. In addition to the activities already mentioned, queer organizations in Kingston have been active in pressuring Queen’s on employment equity practices for gay/lesbian/bisexual people, appealing to the local media to have more equitable practises, for example, not to print letters to the editor which are blatantly discriminatory and near-hateful towards gays/lesbians/bisexuals, or to fairly represent the diversity of the Kingston queer community in coverage of Pride day celebrations, and highlighting homophobia and other forms of discrimination – sexism, racism, etc.- within Queen’s ‘traditions’. A visible struggle in the Queer liberation movement in Kingston centred around the Frontenac County Board of Education. In January 1987, Bruce Warmington, the chair of the board, made deeply homophobic remarks at a board meeting. In reaction to the evidence of homophobia on the board and within the education system, a special Subcommittee on the Understanding of Human Sexuality was created. This committee held forums to listen to community members about how to improve sexual education and diminish heterosexism in the school system. They tabled reports with recommendations to decrease homophobia and promote ‘understanding’. The actions of the Board of Education, beginning with the discriminatory remarks made by the chair in 1987 continued to be controversial, and groups both conservative and Queer-positive groups in the Kingston community, among others, were vocal in their reactions to the developments occurring at the Board of Education. Overall, the documents in this section of the archive highlight the activism of, and difficulties faced by, Kingston’s Queer community over the years. There is information about organizations and services that have existed over the years as well as events from movies to talks to theatre, media coverage, personal stories, legal issues surrounding gay rights - the rights of gay couples in particular, educational and anti-oppressive strategies, commemoration of the inception of the modern gay liberation movement at Stonewall in New York in 1969, and more. The documents are newspaper articles, invitations, flyers and posters, speeches, letters, schedules, and press releases. This documentation serves to expose Kingston’s Queer history. It shows the growth and diversification of the queer community in Kingston, and shows the need for activism and the stuff of activism.
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