For Immediate Release – March 4, 2016
WE DEMAND AN APOLOGY NETWORK media statement.
We support pardons for consensual homosexual sexual activities and an official government apology for those purged from the public service and the military for being lesbian and gay.
The “We Demand an Apology Network, ” which brings together people who were directly affected by the national security campaigns to purge ‘homosexuals’ from the public service, the RCMP and the military, and supporters and researchers who believe an injustice was done, demands an apology for the historical wrongs committed by the Canadian government against LGBT people.
We fully support pardons for those convicted for consensual homosexual activities before and after 1969. However, we also are seeking an apology that will be more inclusive and include all who were harmed and not just before and after the 1969 law reform. Discrimination, including legal, social and economic forms continued well into the 1990s. For example, hundreds –if not thousands — of people lost their jobs and careers in the public service and the military simply because they were lesbian or gay from the 1950s to the early 1990s.
To get information on and the identities of gay men and lesbians in the public service and in the military the RCMP and other security forces would often rely on threatening to lay criminal code charges for consensual homosexual activities to get lesbians and gay men to give them the names and identities of other lesbians and gay men who were in the public service and the military. Those charged with consensual homosexual offences who were in the public service and the military lost their positions. This use of the criminalization of consensual homosexual activities was an important part of the surveillance and purge campaign directed against thousands of people in the military and the public service. This is why if the injustices against LGBT people in Canada are to be addressed we need both a pardon for those convicted who did nothing but engage in consensual homosexual activities and a state apology to those who lost their jobs and careers simply because they were gay or lesbian.
Please feel free to contact us for more information or interviews.
Media contacts for the WE DEMAND AN APOLOGY NETWORK.
Gary Kinsman, gkinsman@laurentian.ca or at (705) 523-2205 or at (647) 385-4221.
Martine Roy, martiner@ca.ibm.com or at 514-246-8411