Any other way

March 2018

Stephanie Chambers’ novel Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer is a book with a fresh look on Toronto’s LGBTQ+ community and their history. It covers many aspects of how their community became so prominent in Toronto.

In the book, Chambers writes, “Toronto has become home to multiple and thriving queer communities whose members reflect the dynamism of a global metropolis. But how did a deeply conservative, provincial city evolve into one of the world’s most important hubs of queer culture?”

One aspect that is increasingly becoming more well-known is the focus on the role that journalism and media played in advancing the cause of and strengthening the LGBTQ2 community in Toronto. For example, The Body Politic.

The Body Politic was a news magazine founded by a man named Jearld Moldenhauer and published its first issue in November of 1971. It was one of Canada’s first significant gay publications that played a huge role in developing the LGBTQ+ community in Toronto. It operated out of Moldenhauer’s home, being that it was still a small and budding publication.

Later on, it became larger and was forced to move locations to accommodate the need for a larger space. Moldenhauer had first proposed the idea of starting a gay-focused publication at a Toronto Gay Alliance meeting in September of 1971.

The collective of writers that wrote for The Body Politic adapted to the name Pink Triangle Press in 1975. It was their non-profit parent organization.

“Because we had a public office, we also became the first-responder organizers of the protests following the notorious bathhouse raids in 1981. We covered subsequent fallout in detail, and what we wrote became essential reading, giving voice to the community’s rage,” Ed Jackson, an editorial writer for The Body Politic for twelve years writes.

“For fifteen years after its first issue in November 1971, its writers challenged sexual orthodoxies, documented community resistance, celebrated queer history and culture, and fought for freedom of the press in a famous court case.”

“We insisted on using our full names, and we photographed ourselves without fear when many queer people were still afraid to be as public. Visibility, being proudly out, was a key operating principle for TBP. We wrote about the joys of ‘throat-ramming’ and flaunted our queerness in print. The take-no-prisoners attitude inspired many readers, but frightened others,” Jackson continued.

“Some years later, we sought to provide a calming voice during the hysteria about AIDS. The cover headline ‘The Case Against Panic’ in our November 1982 issue set the tone. Our commitment to sexual liberation ensured that Toronto’s subsequent response to HIV/AIDS prevention remained sensible and sex-positive,” Jackson writes.

December 30, 1977, was the day that The Body Politic changed forever. Officers from Operation P, the police pornography unit presented a search warrant and raided the office for four hours. They rummaged through filing cabinets and hauled boxes of material down the freight elevator.

The raid also sparked international protests which led to the eventual acquittal of charges against the writers. The attack was prompted by the publication of the November 1977 feature article ‘Men Loving Boys Loving Men,’ written by Gerald Hannon.

It was then that The Body Politic became a legal cause and had to fight for their rights in court. “The intent of the raid was to close us down. We found ourselves fighting for our survival in a very hostile world, some of it coming from our frightened community.”

“After the raid, the police charged three directors of Pink Triangle Press — Gerald Hannon, Ken Popert and me — with an obscure obscenity-related statute in the Criminal Code: using the mails to transmit immoral, indecent, and scurrilous material. The charge led to six years of worry, two trials, one retrial, numerous Crown appeals, and endless fundraising efforts to cover legal costs,” Jackson explained.

Eventually, they were acquitted of every charge and received the documents that were taken from them during the raid in April of 1985. None of these materials were ever used as evidence during the trial.

“During the 1980 municipal election, the police focus on the LGBTQ+ community became a key issue. Mayor John Sewell had spoken out at a public rally in January 1979 in defence of The Body Politic, prompting a massive outcry. Sewell continued to voice criticism of heavy-handed police actions, particularly against the black community, while gay activist and bathhouse owner George Hislop announced he would run for city council,” Jackson explains.

The Body Politic ceased publication in February of 1987 after the launch of Xtra!, its spinoff publication in 1984. More than one hundred and thirty-five issues of The Body Politic remain a vital record for historians. Although it is no longer being published, The Body Politic was ranked the 17th most influential magazine in Canadian Publishing History by Masthead.

Moldenhauer also founded The Glad Day Bookshop in the year 1970. It specializes in gay literature. It is still open today, located at Church and Wellesley in the LGBTQ+ Village. Glad Day has evolved into so much more than just a bookshop. It now serves coffee, cocktails, and food as a bookstore, coffee shop, cocktail bar, event space and dance club.

Moldenhauer began a journalistic movement to end homophobia and gain the power to the LGBTQ+ community of Toronto. “The perception and experience of human sexuality is a culturally based reality that changes from one society to another, and from generation to generation.”

“Queers were situated at the bottom of that pecking order, subjected to propaganda in every form of media, including the advertising of heterosexual status as it directly related to the purchase of consumer products. The sustenance of that order also depended on traditional state power, superstitious religious authority, and pseudo-scientific psychological theory,” he writes.

In a way, Moldenhauer changed the face of LGBTQ+ journalism. He believed in a time where people of all sexual orientations would be accepted in society and would not have to face criticism or ridicule for showing their true colours. It takes courage to stand up against others and start something that will one day become something more significant than was ever imagined.

“We ‘Beepers,’ as we called ourselves, knew that what we were doing was unprecedented. We were part of a larger historical movement around the Anglo-American world. That confidence in the inevitability — and rightness — of the changes we dreamed of was deeply exciting. We thought no queers in the past had ever been so upfront and confrontational,” Jackson writes.

The brave men and women who fought for LGBTQ+ rights back in those years are people to be admired. They were committed and did not waver in their fight against homophobia and discrimination of people who identified as LGBTQ+. Their actions to bring Toronto to a better understanding of what it means to be ‘gay’ will be remembered forever.

“In a metropolitan area this diverse, we must make spaces for the intersections of our differences. And confronted with the shifting tectonic plates of identities — Toronto’s and ours — we must also acknowledge the discomfort and creativity arising from this friction. Toronto’s queerness is not an accomplished state of being, but rather a constant process of becoming,” writes Tatum Taylor and Rahim Thawer, contributing writers to the book Any Other Way.