The dust has settled and Canada has decided to stick with allowing gays to marry. It seems like a big deal but the majority of people don't seem to care. Why should straight Canada care that gays have fought so long and hard for something that most people take for granted? Well marriage is just the icing on top of a long and difficult to swallow cake that has been eaten by a not so small minority of people in our culture - an at times invisible and beaten minority.

Lets take a brief overview of the gay rights movement as yours truly tends to understand it right now.

Gays have existed in human society for as long as human society has been around. Although the facts are murky, the oppression of gays is a relatively new occurence. After centuries, then, of oppression the homosexual population (estimated to be ~10-14% of a given population) began to fight back. Just as women were granted the right to vote, gays were on their way to not being sentenced to death for being what they were.

The gay rights movement began in the 1860's when German activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs came out publicly and began publishing books on same sex love. In North America the women's suffrage movement and liberation activists were populated not only with women fed up with the status quo, but with lesbians who wanted to see change. This allowed a crack in the door to be opened for the broader gay rights movement in North America.

In the 1940's and 50's the gay rights movement became more public and organizations sprung up with members of the social elite, political and wealthy counted as members. Still, homosexuality remained illegal, with many jursidicitions punishing 'sodomy' with death, and gays themselves seen as mentally ill according to the American Psychiatric Association.

However the modern gay movement occurred in the 1960's with the free love movement that popularized activism for women, anti-Vietnam War and civil rights. The turning point is generally accepted to be the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar that was frequently raided (as were other gay bars) and patrons were arrested for being homosexual. However on one particular night the patrons resisted arrest and they fought back... for days. Soon after gay liberation groups popped up around the US and other Western nations to challenge the way homosexuals were seen by the rest of the population.

Gay rights have come a long way and unfortunately still have a long ways to go before it is accepted in today's society.


Anyways, that is a very, very brief overview of the gay rights movement as it stands today. It should stand as a hallmark, then that gays have achieved the right to marry someone who they truly love and are recognized as a couple, a family, just as anyone else would be. This is why the recent 'revisitation' of the 'gay marriage debate' is so important to not just gays but to Canadians. Canadians pride themselves on being multicultural. Culture isn't just defined as being Chinese, French, Ukrainian or First Nations... it isn't always about where you come from but who you associate with and with whom you feel at home. In this way there is a gay culture and Canada must recognize that the rights of this culture are every bit as important as the rights of Muslims or Christians.

So, thats the end of my rant... and I hope you actually read it, instead of skimming over for some crude joke involving cunts or abortions.

I leave you with a list of prominent gay historical figures so that you can see that human history has been contributed to by not only heterosexuals.

Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Beethoven, Freddie Mercury.

There are, of course, many more, but the night is getting shorter and I need sleep. I'll probably put up another post on this topic soon, but I do have lots of filth in between. Thaks for reading!