The arrest of roughly 300 gay men led to a series of protests by gays and lesbians, including a riot that became known as “the Battle of Church Street.”1 The Toronto Star described this event as “a police riot” during which “Police showed up with billy clubs and drove a police car into the crowd, sending [The Body Politic editor] Ken Popert to hospital. The emergency room was full. The battles continued in the streets.”2 Physical attacks on the third spaces of marginalized communities in the early 1980s influenced the gay community to work in the interest of other axes of marginalization such as race and gender. Such attacks included, for example, the establishment of a Klu Klux Klan chapter in Toronto in 1981.
Parallel invasions of community spaces in early 1980s Toronto provided the impetus for organizations, like Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE), that directed their organizing energies against these reactionary forms of conservativism. Throughout this period, GLARE hosted events concerning feminist, anti-racist, and union issues alike. On April 4th, 1981, GLARE sponsored and hosted “Fighting the Right! A Day of Lesbian and Gay Pride, Culture, and Information” out of 519 Church Street, a community centre in the heart of Toronto. GLARE’s “Fighting the Right!” event demonstrates the gay and lesbian community’s strong distrust of the police in this period of Canadian history. For example, their labelling of the police as “The Uniformed Right” was likely a result of witnessing violence enacted by the police at “The Battle of Church Street.”3
“Fighting the Right” demonstrated GLARE’s effort to unify gay and lesbian liberation with feminism and anti-racism. While the term ‘intersectionality’ was not defined until 1989 when legal scholar and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw described it as “the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment experiences,” GLARE’s “Fighting the Right!” event highlights an emergent intersectional politics within grassroots LGBTQ+ organizations in early 1980s Toronto. Crucially, GLARE encouraged a broad-based leftist coalition in response to right-wing attacks against already marginalized identities. The purpose of their “Fighting the Right!” event was largely to educate and build connections with other besieged communities.
The event hosted a mixture of thought-based and creative activities such as singing groups, self-defence classes, a theatrical play, and a bake sale. Attendees participated in workshops on a variety of issues such as queer liberation efforts (segregated by gender in acknowledgement of the unique gendered nature of lesbophobia compared to homophobia faced by gay men); the police; trade unions; fighting the Ku Klux Klan’s newly established chapter into Toronto; and a Violence Against Women workshop led by the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre. With such a multiplicity of issues, it was understood that all members and attendees would be advocates or proponents for a broad coalition of marginalized groups. Gay men were learning about the inequalities faced by women; women were learning to appreciate struggles within the queer community in return; and both were adopting anti-racist practices to address the issues facing racialized women and queer people.4 In this period, GLARE’s efforts to incorporate race into their conversations on sexuality and gender were relatively unique. Feminist, gay liberation, and anti-racist groups frequently turned inwards in the 80s because of the regression in social attitudes towards marginalized identities during the Reagan and Mulroney administrations. Feminists and queer groups alike often used racialized groups like black militants as “boundary” figures to make themselves appear more reasonable and thus diminish their status as targets.5 GLARE’s decision to work towards allyship was especially radical in this context. GLARE’s events were not held to persuade their ideological opponents, but rather to foster a politics of solidarity within their own community’s efforts to liberate queer men and women.
In their promotional material, GLARE defined themselves as “a coalition of lesbians and gay men dedicated to fighting the anti-lesbian and anti-gay attacks of the Right through educational work and cultural activities to affirm the pride of our communities.”6 They distributed pamphlets and flyers by feminist and queer members of the organization such as Lorna Weir, Brian Conway, Brian Mossop, Hugh English, and Gary Kinsman.7 This material aimed to dispel disinformation and counteract homophobic talking points from various voices in the media. The year 1980 saw the emergence of a plethora of homophobic voices such as Positive Parents, League Against Homosexuals, and Claire Hoy, a Toronto Sun columnist. GLARE strenuously called for the Sun to terminate Hoy’s employment due to opinion pieces attacking the 2SLGBTQ+ community.8 Workshops targeting the political right’s misinformation campaigns arose in other queer liberation groups across Toronto, including lesbian feminist organizations such as Lesbians Against the Right (of which Lorna Weir was also a member), the Lavender Left Network, and other parties involved in International Women’s Day marches. GLARE collaborated with these groups in promoting various solidarity-based events.
In defining themselves as opponents of right-wing aggression, GLARE helped to establish a haven for broad leftist organizing. Identity-based groups began to embrace the idea of fighting politically oppressive ideology from a unified front of gender, race, and sexuality as opposed to keeping all issues separate. Their writings addressed tensions between lesbian feminists and gay men, bridging the gap and uniting the two into a broader community. As a result, their written counterattacks against homophobia continuously stress the discontent from lesbians and feminists as well as from gay men. For example, pamphlets and essays from valuable members of the organization emphasized that racist, gendered, and sexual oppressions were interrelated. This step towards inclusive framing was especially meaningful for lesbians who, as GLARE noted, felt excluded from feminist circles for being lesbians and excluded from gay liberation efforts for being women.9
GLARE understood the issues of the LGBTQ+ community as synonymous with those of women, trade workers, and black communities in confrontation with right-wing political ideologies of the 1980s. Their educational material and mission statement overall were highly oppositional and purposefully provocative in tone; from what I observed of GLARE’s posters, pamphlets, and educational material, events such as “Fighting the Right!” intended to unify Toronto’s plurality of marginalized voices.10 Not only did they include racialized voices, but the title of their workshop “The KKK: Our Enemy As Well” worked specifically to show that racist violence equated to violence against women and the queer community. GLARE used this workshop to integrate conversations about race into the fold of their anti-Right organizing.
GLARE’s use of the Church Street community centre was crucial to achieving this goal. Importantly, the centre is still in operation, known today as The 519. The 519 functions under the same intersectional principles as GLARE, stating in its strategic priorities their goal to “respond to 2SLGBTQ+ communities disproportionately impacted by systemic discrimination, including Indigenous communities, Black communities, racialized communities, trans and non-binary communities, women, low-income communities, people experiencing homelessness, and people who use substances.”11 The 519 continues the rhetorical tradition of Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere; in its organizational priorities and commitment to maintaining a diverse portfolio of grassroots activism, the centre can be understood as a local manifestation of GLARE’s legacy.
GLARE’s educational and community-building approach remains relevant today. Our current political moment sees Conservative and Republican parties in North America embracing a right-wing populist ideology to mount political attacks against the queer community, women, immigrants, the Black community, and other racialized groups. “Fighting the Right! A Day of Lesbian and Gay Pride, Culture and Information” embodied GLARE’s most core purpose as a group: to fight threats against the physical spaces of all marginalized people, particularly at the intersection of gender, race, and sexuality, and to build allyship between oppressed groups in order to neutralize oppressive systems.
Abby Denne (she/her/elle) is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Carleton University in Honours English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Her current research focuses on the intersection of genre studies and queer history.
Notes
- DiMatteo, Enzo, et al. “44 Radical Moments That Shaped Toronto Pride History,” NOW Toronto, 23 June 2021, nowtoronto.com/news/44-radical-moments-that-shaped-toronto-pride-history/.
- Ibid.
- “Fighting the Right! A Day of Lesbian and Gay Pride, Culture, and Information” (4 April 1981), Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE), CMWA Collection, University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections, 10-001-S1-F1035.
- “Gay Men and Feminism” (1982), Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE), CMWA Collection, University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections, 10-001-S1-F1035.
- Hesford, Victoria. “From Lady Protestors to Urban Guerrillas: Media Representations of the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970,” Feeling Women’s Liberation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).
- “Gay Men and Feminism” (1982), Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE).
- Ibid.
- “Fighting the Right! A Day of Lesbian and Gay Pride, Culture, and Information” (4 April 1981), Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE).
- “Gay Men and Feminism” (1982), Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE).
- “Fighting the Right! A Day of Lesbian and Gay Pride, Culture, and Information” (4 April 1981), Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE).
- Strategic Priorities - the 519. 11 May 2023, www.the519.org/about/strategic-priorities/.