The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 64

THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL, WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2006 GAMES MILESTONES 4: ft Saw 1648 A military drummer in Ville Marie, as Montreal is then called, is sentenced to death after being caught having gay sex, "the worst of crimes." He is offered a reprieve if he will become the colony's executioner. He agrees to do so. IQ XOS A discreet gay bar scene begins in Montreal, with certain tables set aside for those in the know, within otherwise straight bars. I0(lT Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau proposes amendments to Canada's Criminal Code which, among other things, would relax the laws against homosexuality. "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation," he says.

I97I Quebec's firs gay-rights organization, the Front de liberation homosexuelle (FLH), is formed. The name is a deliberate reference to the separatist Front de liberation du Quebec: "You have to liberate yourself before you liberate Quebec." 1975 Tne Aquarius bathhouse on Crescent St. is firebombed. Of the three who die in the fire, two are never identified. I977 Fifty machine-gun-carrying Montreal police raid a Stanley St gay bar called Truxx, arresting about 150 people, mostly as bawdy house found-ins.

I97T An amendment to the Quebec Charter of Rights outlaws discrimination based on homosexuality PIERRE OBENDRAUF THE GAZETTE Tynan Jarrett of Project 10, which offers counselling services, says gay teens are another marginalized group that lacks resources. FOR SOM the trans community represents the next frontier of the queer struggle. Will the lesbian and gay mainstream join in? More battles ahead 1902 A Gazette headline refers to the "Gay Plague." There had been 10 reported cases and eight deaths in Montreal from what doctors termed GRID (gay-related immunodeficiency) or the preferred ADDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). 1903 Former Parti Quebecois cabinet minister Claude Char-ron comes out of the closet in his memoir, Desobeir. 1086 Montreal city council candidate Raymond Blain, who calls himself the first openly homosexual candidate in Quebec, is elected in St.

Jacques district, which includes the Gay Village. I9OO Tourism Montreal begins marketing Montreal as a gay-friendly destination. Svend Robinson of the New Democratic Party goes public about being gay, becoming the first MP to do so. I909 Gay-rights activist Joe Rose, 23, is stabbed to death on a lafe-night bus. A 19-year-old is sentenced to seven years for manslaughter; four juveniles also are jailed.

Montreal plays host to the Fifth International Conference on AIDS, which attracts 10,000 delegates and journalists. I99O Police raid Sex Garage, an Old Montreal loft party, in a turning point in gays' relations with police in the city MARY LAMEY THE GAZETTE 1 200 march in Montreal in the Gay Pride parade. l99 J.992 Montreal recognizes same-sex couples in insurance plans for its workers. Four skinheads kill a jogger in Angrignon Park. In court, the juveniles admit they attacked him on the assumption he was gay They get the maximum three years in jail after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

back and enjoy the gains they've made. Michel-Louis Taillefer sees it every day He works for the Farha Foundation, which raises money for AIDS-related charities. The foundation has seen a steady decline in donations and participation in its annual fundraising walk. In the early '90s, it routinely raised about $550,000 a year. Now that number stands at $400,000.

Declining support comes hand-in-hand with a resurgence in HTV infection in Quebec. According to the Health Department, between 1,200 and 1,500 new cases of HIV are reported in the province each year, most of them in greater Montreal The infection rate is double that of Ontario. It is confounding and worrying to Taillefer, who thinks a younger generation that didn't see friends and lovers die by the hundreds is less preoccupied by the disease. "The creation of the first AIDS drugs in 1995 changed the playing field. Now, people think of it as a manageable disease, if you take a pill for it." As a man living with HIV, Taillefer knows first hand how wrong that is.

"They think a drug cocktail is one dose of one medication. I'm taking seven, and while it is better than the 37 1 used to take, it is no picnic" ft ft Working with LGBT youth, Tynan Jarrett has a different perspective on AIDS. While older activists like to point a finger at kids for not learning from history, he sees another marginalized group that lacks resources and autonomy "Think of all the challenges of being a teenager; now add to that this secret that you are not sure you can tell anyone," said Jarrett, a coordinator of Project 10, an outreach service for LGBT youth. He views Montreal's gay community as boomer-centric and disposed to giving little thought to the issues facing young people. Project 10 is the only group offering face-to-face LGBT youth counselling on the island.

It also has a phone line, on-line counselling, discussion groups and social activities for youth 14 to 25. It gets by with $50,000 in provincial funding and with little support volunteers, donations and mentoring from the gay community "What I see is that queer and trans youth are neglected, under-funded and under-represented. They don't get proportional service," said Jarrett, 32. As for AIDS, if today's youth aren't talking about it as much as their elders did, it It's been a year since the law recognizing same-sex marriage came into effect in Canada. Michael Hendricks has bad news for those who hoped the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered citizens would finally shut up: There's still work to do.

"The last legal barrier to equality has been broken, but that doesn't erase 1,600 years of stigmatization and criminalization," said Hendricks, who along with his spouse Rene LeBoeuf, led the campaign for equal marriage. What's next depends very much on whom you ask. The campaign for gay marriage didn't enjoy universal support even within the diverse subsets that make up Montreal's LGBT community. There's no consensus on what comes next, either. "We may all be under the same tent, but we don't all sit in the same cheering section," said transgendered activist Miche-line Montreuil.

The trans community a sweeping term that encompasses pre- and post-operative transsexuals, as well as those who opt out of surgical sex re-assignment, transves-tites and others who reject society's notions of male and female is still struggling for dignity and respect. For some, this is the next big frontier of the queer struggle. The test will be whether the comfortable lesbian and gay mainstream will join the battle's front lines. Julie-Maude Beauchesne sees positive signs they wilL Beauchesne was born male 31 years ago, but underwent hormone treatment in 2002 to transform her body so it "matched" the soul within. Today, she lives as a lesbian with her girlfriend Veronique Brisson and edits AlterHeros, a website for queer youth and their families "It has only been in the last three or four years that the gay and lesbian community and the trans community have begun to work together.

The dialogue is only beginning. Our challenge is to open it up." The checklist of difficulties faced by the trans-identified is familiar to gays and lesbians: access to health care, job discrimination, lack of legal recognition. Beauchesne and Montreuil speak of the suspicion and prejudice transgendered people continue to face, not just from society, but also from supposed allies. "There are those who say we aren't real women," Montreuil said. "We can't be lesbians because we're mea" 4 'tp Montreal's LGBT community was forged by the ADDS crisis and further radicalized by the 1990 Sex Garage police raid.

That marked a turning point "Sex Garage brought everyone together, guys, girls, old, young, anglo, francophone, drag queens," said Richard Burnett, author of the syndicated gay column Three Dollar Bill in the Montreal weekly Hour He remembers that at the time, a popular Montreal gay bar had a portrait of the Queen with a red line through it just inside the front door. The message was clear no women or queens allowed. "It took friends dying and people being beaten to bring us together," Burnett said. But there is a corollary to that with fewer people dying and being beaten, many within the community are ready to sit is because they have grown up in its shadow. They know about condoms and prevention, Jarrett said.

"For many of them, the struggle is about dropping out of school, finding a job and a place to five because they can't live at home anymore." 4 iff it Now that lesbians and gays have won legal equality, Alan Wong thinks it might be time for the community to turn inward and take a look at itself. Wong is a coordinator of GLAM, a pan-Asian LGBT group in Montreal. He is ready to challenge what he calls a "privileging of white male homo-centrism" within the community Others might call it casual racism. "Open up any local magazine and you'll see personal ads that say no blacks or no Asians," Wong said. "It's like we haven't learned anything about discrimination." As Julie-Maude Beauchesne said: "We expect others to accept our differences, but we aren't necessarily ready to accept them ourselves." jr fk For more than two years, representatives from 30 LGBT groups from around the province and representatives from each Quebec government department have been in a working group tasked with making equality not just the law but a day-today reality The group is being steered by the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

It is looking at a wide swath of issues, including immigration matters, sports and leisure, family policy, work, health care, ed- ucation and arts and culture. In the fall, it is expected to issue a report. Many on the committee hope it will include a recommendation that the government establish a permanent secretariat for LGBT affairs, to ensure that queer Quebe-cers have a voice in the halls of government There are also hopes Quebec will issue an official policy against homophobia. "That would send such a strong message," said Mona Greenbaum, co-ordina-tor of the Lesbian Mothers Association and a member of the working group. A mother of two, she is sometimes disappointed by how little society has changed.

"I guess that I thought that by the time my kid started school we'd have all kinds of programs in place so that he wouldn't feel so isolated," said Greenbaum, whose oldest son will enter Grade 3 in the falL The push to ensure that sexual diversity has the same place in the curriculum as racial diversity is ongoing. Currently, Quebec schools can opt to include it Both Greenbaum and Hendricks see this as a challenge worth fighting for Law may guarantee equality to those who are LGBT, but until it becomes normalized, equality won't be achieved. "It isn't just about my kids," Greenbaum said. "Think of the gays kids growing up. Think of the kids with gay parents or a gay relative.

As long as we can't address it, we're sending mixed signals." To Hendricks, it is very simple: "We need to reach those kids before they grow up and learn that it is OK to beat us up. That's when there will be real social change." mlameythegazette.canwest.com MARIE-FRANCE COALUER THE GAZETTE 2004: Hendricks (left) and Leboeuf get married in Montreal. 1993 DiversCite takes over Montreal's gay pride parade, making it bigger and more popular over the years. 199(5 Tne federal government makes discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal. 1998 Michael Hendricks and Rene Leboeuf go to Montreal's courthouse seeking a marriage license but are told marriage is for men and women.

They file a complaint with Quebec Human Rights Commission. 1999 The federal government votes 216 to 55 in favour of preserving the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Quebec's Bill 32, "a law concerning de facto couples," gives gays the same social benefits as heterosexual common-law couples. 2000 Parliament amends 68 federal statutes, giving same-sex couples the same social and tax benefits as heterosexuals in common-law relationships. 2002 Same-sex civil unions become legal in Quebec; 149 ceremonies are performed that year.

Quebec Superior Court rules that the legal definition of marriage, which allows only for a union between a man and a woman, violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 2004 Quebec Court of Appeal upholds the 2002 Superior Court ruling. Michael Hendricks and Rene Leboeuf marry at Montreal's courthouse, Quebec's first same-sex couple to do so. In December, the Supreme Court rules the federal government has the authority to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, but that religious officials cannot be forced to perform unions against their beliefs. 200ti By a vote of 158 to 133, the House of Commons passes Bill C-38 legalizing same-sex marriage across the country The bill becomes law.

SOURCES: GAZETTE, ARCHIVES CAIES DU QUEBEC, WWW.CBC.CA, For more information alterheros.com (Information for LGBT youth and their families) (Lesbian Mothers Association) cttq.org (Transexual Coalition of Quebec) farha.qc.ca (Farha Foundation for AIDS awareness and fundraising) fugues.com (Montreal's gay monthly magazine and listings) plO.qcca (LGBT youth support group, under construction) (AIDS awareness advocacy) LA PRESSE, MONTREAL MIRROR. VOIR.