Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada (review)

This is an important book. Despite the occasional slips into excess, Never Going Back provides a fair-minded, comprehensive, and often moving account of an important and difficult topic. If you want to begin to understand lesbian and gay activism both in and, more importantly, outside of Toronto, in Canada's other regions, in Quebec, in its small towns, and on its reserves, this book should be on your shelves.

The introduction signals the essential optimism of the volume, claiming for lesbian and gay liberation "a revolutionary new consciousness" (3). Rejecting the term gay liberation as dated, exclusive, and discriminatory, Warner sets out to include the full range of queer activism and to acknowledge the sexism that has dogged many gay groups. He provides a tour of Canada's queer, lesbian, and gay historiography that is lively, opinionated, and largely convincing. His preference for a liberationist sexual politics is clear, but he works hard to be fair to the "human rights and equality-seeking dimensions of the lesbian and gay movement." He insists, however, that the "assimilationist politics" of the latter deserve serious criticism and that the challenge of "liberationists" to "community standards concerning sexuality" (6) and heterosexism generally has been powerful and sustained for more than thirty years. These "brave" and "courageous" spirits emerge as the real heroes or heroines of his tale.

Part 1, "From Oppression to Liberation: Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals in Canada prior to 1975," consists of three chapters. The first examines the roots of oppression. This abbreviated survey moves quickly from A.D. 527 to consider "religion and state regulation," the social purity movement, medical definitions of "deviance and abnormality," post-World War II's homophobic national security crusades, the evolution of human rights law, the "Canadian family structure," "aboriginal or two-spirited people," "other cultural and racial minorities," "the mainstream media and entertainment industries," and "attitudes of the police and courts." While students will appreciate the introduction to key issues, the more knowledgeable are likely to be less happy. The author does not, for example, reconcile claims that "homophobia and heterosexism have always been with us" (17) with his largely positive assessment of precontact Native societies, which he describes, quite correctly, as not possessing "a single view of homosexuality" (33). Still, it's good to know the enemy, and this chapter nicely sets up the opposition. Chapter 2 describes decriminalization and gay and lesbian organizing in the 1950s and 1960s. It points to the significance of British legal influence, the early strength of religious fundamentalism, and the emergence, albeit sometimes unsteadily, of political consciousness, often inspired by the American example, in the small as well as the big places of Canada. Figures like Jim Egan emerge as clear heroes. Chapter 3 considers "gay liberation" in the 1970s, "an amazing time of exuberance, optimism, astonishing innovation, and sometimes breath-taking courage" (61). Warner's admiration is qualified by the recognition that many groups largely ignored "sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression" (68). Lesbian separatism was one result. Even as "gay pride" flourished, motherhood and child custody began to emerge as part of the rights agenda.

Part 2, "Progress amid Backlash, Dissent, and Crises, 1975-1984," has five chapters. Chapter 4 describes the largely unrelenting heterosexism and homophobia of the courts and the police. Groups like the Lesbian Mothers Defence Fund and the Comité Homosexuel Anti-repression of Montreal, together with community newspapers, bookstores, and publishers, fought the good fight against repression and intolerance. Chapter 5, "Raging Debates, Elusive Consensus," reaffirms the diversity of lesbian and gay politics. Explosive disagreements about age of consent, pornography, and public sex pitted some feminist lesbians against some lesbian and gay liberationists. Chapter 6 turns to the backlash and social conservative insurgency that targeted all progressive people in these years...