“Forgiveness… is not merely irresponsible. It is a historical impossibility.”
By Paul Gallant
Not getting a deserved apology for a wrong can be very frustrating because the refusal can seem so calculated. The person refusing to apologize is ignoring or sidestepping the facts, being cruel, covering their ass, avoiding responsibility and liability. Just say it, damn it.
Forgiveness seems more ineffable. Even though studies have shown that forgiving is good for the forgiver, it’s harder to fake. We can say forgiving words – and even mean them – but still feel hardness in our heart, still distrust the apologizer, who, having been forgiven, can walk away with a spring in their step. Even if both parties agree on the facts, the harm mostly went one way, and not everybody has great skills at getting over lingering trauma.
Which is why I was intrigued by a recent paper written by Daniel del Gobbo, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Law, a lawyer and an LGBTQ2 activist, titled “Reckoning with Queer History: The Canadian ‘LGBT Purge’ and the Limits of Forgiveness.”
Before I recap the historical background of what he’s writing about, let me give away the ending. Del Gobbo writes, “Forgiveness… is not merely irresponsible. It is a historical impossibility.”
So, the story, as I’ll paraphrase from del Gobbo’s paper, starts in Canada in the 1950s. Of course, 2SLGBTQI+ people had been oppressed and demonized in Canada before then, but this was the beginning of the federal government’s systematic attempt to remove people who were “sexually abnormal” – usually 2SLGBTQI+ – from the Canadian Armed Forces, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the federal public service. To find these “worrisome deviants,” government agencies tapped the phones of individuals suspected of being queer, followed them after work hours, surveilled bars and nightclubs and set up traps to catch them in some sort of homosexual compromise. Once identified, del Gobbo recounts, suspects would be brought to undisclosed locations where they were harassed, intimidated and questioned for hours. Most colourfully and bizarrely, the Canadian government invented a device known as the “Fruit Machine,” which purported to determine a person’s sexual orientation by measuring the dilation of their pupils when shown images of half-naked bodies.
“The RCMP opened over 9,000 files concerning LGBTQ2 people by the late 1960s,” writes del Gobbo. “Given the early date of this estimate and the impacts of the government’s policies that transcended the experiences of [those] most directly affected, including family members, friends, individuals for whom no RCMP file was opened, and future generations of LGBTQ2 people, the total number of LGBT Purge victims is clearly much higher.”
Though the tactics mellowed over the decades, the military, with particular vehemence, discriminated against queer people until 1992, well after the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969. It wasn’t until 1992 that a court case launched by Michelle Douglas (who had been forced out of the military for being “not advantageously employable due to homosexuality”) and mounting political pressure forced the government to lift its ban on openly 2SLGBTQI+ people serving in the military. So being gay was now (technically) okay…but what about the sore feelings from those 40 years of purging us? The lives knocked off course, the suicides committed out of desperation?
In 2015, with Justin Trudeau newly elected as prime minister, 2SLGBTQI+ activists started to call on the federal government to formally apologize and create a redress plan. A class-action suit was launched in 2016 by those who had been affected by the purge. In 2017, the government announced a legal settlement, and a teary-eyed Trudeau gave a seemingly heartfelt apology in the House of Commons. In his prepared statement, he said: “While we may view modern Canada as a forward-thinking, progressive nation, we can’t forget our past: the state orchestrated a culture of stigma and fear around LGBTQ2 communities. And in doing so, destroyed people’s lives.”
The global settlement was for $145 million, with up to $110 million of that earmarked for the payment of damages to LGBT Purge victims, according to the LGBT Purge Fund website. Some good will come of it. But back to the larger question: can money buy forgiveness? Del Gobbo has his doubts.
“In a civil lawsuit where a plaintiff and defendant reach a settlement out of court, it’s often the case that one party will ‘release,’ or legally forgive, the other party’s liability,” del Gobbo tells me in an interview.” By accepting the settlement, the class members of the lawsuit have effectively forgiven the government.”
But there is a gap between legal forgiveness and emotional forgiveness, between accepting a settlement and feeling like things have been made right. “Obviously, the law can’t force someone to forgive another person emotionally. However, the law can pressure someone to forgive,” del Gobbo tells me. “In the Purge case, the law, government actors and various social forces combined to pressure the class members and other LGBTQ2 people to forgive the government, whether legally or emotionally.”
Pressured or not, the purge victims were vindicated and got some cash; as they age and die, their feelings won’t matter anymore. But it is these “other LGBTQ2 people” who must, now and in the future, grapple with an emboldened government that might think that, having done a good job with the purge apology, its job in reconciling with the community is done. Del Gobbo and other academics argue that Trudeau’s apology was too narrow, and failed “to recognize and properly atone for the complex ways that the government discriminated – and continues to discriminate – against queer and trans people.”
Today’s vulnerable communities – particularly Black, Indigenous and racialized people, trans individuals, persons with disabilities, low-income people, and others who continue to face barriers to full inclusion and acceptance – might not have been alive during the purge. They might not even know it happened. But they have demands and needs from a government that might boastfully declare it has ticked queer people off its to-do list.
It’s even more awkward when you consider that while an older generation was on the receiving end of the positive results of the apology-and-forgiveness process – their worst days are behind them – future generations may be faced with the negative results, a “didn’t we settle that already?” response when making further demands of government.
Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. I think del Gobbo’s notion of forgiveness being irresponsible and impossible doesn’t quite capture the reality of reconciliation. Just as one partner might apologize for one bit of relationship negligence – always forgetting the milk – and the other might forgive them, believing that they’ll do better, that process might repeat again and again for a series of apology-worthy events over the course of a relationship. Not doing the dishes, not walking the dogs, embarrassing their partner in public, unethical sexual behaviour. For couples in a dysfunctional relationship, the apology-and-forgiveness process might eat up most of their time together.
The purge settlement was not the be-all and end-all of the relationship between Canada’s government and its 2SLGBTQI+ population, especially those born after the purge and probably oblivious to the settlement. Outside of a perfect relationship – and what government has a perfect relationship with its people? – there will always be another grievance to work through. It’s up to community members themselves – not the government or the lawyers – to define injustices (plural) and to strike a course for setting things right. Trying to globally fix everything in one fell swoop usually results in nothing getting fixed at all.
In the war against injustice, every battle has its own players, rules and context. Even if the war is eternal and requires eternal vigilance, each battle should have an ending. Each battle needs an ending. Success helps, not hinders, the next one.
PAUL GALLANT is a Toronto-based writer and editor who writes about travel, innovation, city building, social issues (particularly LGBT issues) and business for a variety of national and international publications. He’s done time as lead editor at the loop magazine in Vancouver as well as Xtra and fab in Toronto. His debut novel, Still More Stubborn Stars, published by Acorn Press, is out now.
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