Advertisement

Religion, politics behind different Canadian, U.S. attitudes on LGBTQ rights

image

[The pride flag flies following a raising ceremony on Parliament Hill on Wednesday June 1, 2016, in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld]

On June 12, the world awoke to horrific news: a gunman opened fire at Pulse, an Orlando gay nightclub, killing 49 people and leaving 53 others injured. The massacre is now the single deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ community in U.S. history, and prompted much debate about why it happened.

Some activists pointed to the previous legislative session in the United States, in which over 200 bills were introduced targeting LGBTQ people. The most famous of those is North Carolina’s HB2, which prevented transgender people from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identities.

Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the U.S., says the community is reeling from the attack in Orlando and feeling “under siege” after a “really hostile legislative session” in which these bills were introduced.

“I think while the community was inspired and emboldened by the marriage equality decision a year ago, the events of the last few months have really reminded the country as a whole and underscored for the community the work that still remains,” McBride tells Yahoo Canada News.

The Orlando incident also shocked the Canadian LGBTQ community. Vigils were held across the country. It left many wondering, “Why is this still happening?” and underscored major differences between Canada and the U.S. on LGBTQ issues. While shootings in Canada are less frequent overall, events in which the LGBTQ community is targeted at such a level are practically unheard of.

While we have much in common with our American neighbours, experts say there are some fundamental differences in how we approach LGBTQ rights rooted in how our political systems operate and the rates of religiosity in both countries.

Overall attitudes

A 2013 Pew Research Center poll found 80 per cent of Canadians agreed society should accept homosexuality, which is a 10 per cent increase from a poll that asked the same question in 2007. In comparison, 60 per cent of Americans said society should accept homosexuality, up 11 per cent from 2007, when 49 per cent agreed.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted in May found 55 per cent of Americans support same-sex marriage, which is a marked change from 2001, when the think-tank conducted a poll that found 57 per cent of Americans opposed it. In contrast, polling firms have largely stopped asking Canadians whether they are pro- or anti-same-sex marriage, says David Rayside, a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Toronto. He has published two books on Canadian and American attitudes on LGBTQ issues.

image

[Nearly 100 gay rights activists demonstrate on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Aug. 29, 1971, marching past the Peace Tower carrying signs that read “Canada: True, North, Strong and Gay” and “Homosexuals are Human Beings.” THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Bregg]

Difference in politics means less backlash in Canada

While acceptance of homosexuality and support for same-sex marriage has grown both north and south of the border, transgender rights are now in the spotlight more than ever.

There are now 18 U.S. states, plus Washington, D.C., that have codified discrimination protections for transgender people, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. This year, a wave of bills targeting the transgender community was introduced in many states. That hasn’t happened in Canada, which introduced a federal bill to protect transgender rights last month.

That backlash is nothing new in the U.S., Rayside says. He says the United States has seen a gradual “turn in the tides” on LGBTQ issues and a major policy shift over the last five to 10 years, but the anti-trans bills are very similar to “the whole wave of anti-marriage referenda of decades past.”

“The American policy pattern has been for us to see kind of pioneering steps… then lots of resistance, and inch-by-inch spread from one locality to others and from one state to the others,” Rayside says.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been backlash in Canada around LGBTQ rights.

In March 2000, the Alberta legislature passed Bill 202, which altered the province’s Marriage Act to define marriage as heterosexual. The province also invoked Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, also known as the notwithstanding clause, in an attempt to prevent that definition of marriage being challenged under the Charter. The Supreme Court of Canada later ruled only Parliament had the jurisdiction to define marriage.

A more recent example came in 2014 with the previous transgender rights bill. The legislation made its way through the House of Commons, but died in the Senate after Conservative Sen. Don Plett insisted a clause be inserted stipulating transgender people could not use washrooms, shelters or be housed in prisons corresponding to their gender identities.

The difference is there haven’t been attempts to roll back rights that have already been gained in Canada like there have been in some parts of the United States, says Gabrielle Bouchard of Montreal’s Centre for Gender Advocacy, which does a lot of transgender rights advocacy.

One example is the infamous Proposition 8 in California. The state began issuing same-sex marriage licences in June 2008, but in November of that year, a referendum during the federal election barred same-sex marriage through a state constitutional amendment. It was overturned in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2013.

Bouchard points to Canada’s 2014 trans rights bill and North Carolina’s HB2 as evidence of her point.

“Although we had one MP and one senator from the Conservative government who were the flag-bearers of transphobia, there were two of them,” she says. “Are there political roadblocks? There are, but the conversation is hugely different.

“In the States there is the use of legislation to discriminate. There are actual concerted efforts and actions to create transphobic legislation. We don’t have that here. We have transphobic barriers, but we don’t have people who actively say, ‘We’re going to try to put barriers and make them legal so people can’t go about their lives.’”

Rayside agrees.

“There hasn’t really been a plausible risk until now — I’m not saying forever — of the rights being gained so far being rolled back here in Canada,” he says.

image

[A man holds a candle and a pride flag during "Kingston stands in Solidarity with Orlando” in Kingston, Ont., on June 13, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Lars Hagberg]

Canada ‘much less religious’

Rayside says the lack of major backlash is because the Canadian political right is less galvanized than in the United States, partly because it tends to focus more on economic issues than social ones. This has also been less extensive in Canada because society is less religious overall, Rayside says. Since there are less religious people, there are also less evangelical Christians.

“Within that, there is a significantly lower proportion of the population that is conservative Christian, which has been for some time in the vanguard of opposition to LGBT rights,” he says.

“Particularly evangelical Christianity is very influential, and as a proportion of the population, evangelical Christians constitute at least twice as substantial a proportion of the population in the United States as they are in Canada.”

Bouchard says while it is true Canada is less religious overall, some parts of the country are still struggling to accept LGBTQ people more than others. She says francophone Quebecers in particular have been resistant to movement on transgender rights, partly because these parts of society have been more Catholic than anglophones.

“It’s more diluted and more insidious here than in the States,” Bouchard says. “In the States it’s more out there.”

‘A beacon of light and hope’

These overall differences mean Canada has an opportunity to become a world leader again on trans issues, just as it was with same-gender marriage a decade ago, says Susan Gapka, a prominent trans rights activist.

“It’s unbelievable that we’ve got so much momentum at this time,” Gapka says. “Society’s going to change in ways that we could never imagine. The beauty for me is to see that happen.”