London's gay rights trailblazers reflect on current homophobic tensions

David Long vividly remembers the gay community club at Colborne and Pall Mall streets in the 1980 and '90s: People  outside shouting homophobic slurs as he walked in the front door, the windows long boarded up because they'd been broken so many times. 

"We were suffering attacks all the time at that time. People were throwing stuff outside, but the music didn't stop and the dancing didn't stop, in defiance," said Long, who served as president of the Homophile Association of London Ontario (HALO) and was at the forefront of the fight against the mayor at the time, Dianne Haskett. She refused to proclaim gay pride at city hall because it went against her Christian values. 

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruled against the city and Haskett, and a Pride flag was eventually flown over city hall. 

"It's just very sad when you see what's going on now. I'm just hearing the same things over and over again, the same lame excuses justifying discrimination." 

Several smaller rural communities around London have refused to fly rainbow flags, a symbol of acceptance for the LGBTQ community, in their municipalities, most notably Norwich Township, which saw flags torn down all over its downtown last year and this year voted to ban the flying of rainbow flags on municipal property. 

Long remembers the AIDS epidemic and changes that happened in hospitals, such as allowing non-family members to visit and making visiting hours longer, because of pressure from the gay community. 

"We changed a lot of things. We thought we changed what we needed to," Long said. 

This weekend, protesters squared off against people attending Wortley Pride in Old South. Last week, a Pride flag in front of Banting high school was torn down by students and thrown into a nearby garbage can. Police are investigating that incident as a hate crime. 

"There's always been a lot of hostility toward the flag, particularly in the rural settings. We'd hear a lot of concerns being raised," said Matt Reid, who served as a trustee with the Thames Valley Different School Board and oversaw the policy that led to the flying of the Pride flag at all schools starting in 2016.

"I worry that as a society, we're going backward by a decade or two. There were so many advances and here we are," Reid said. "I worry about that student at Banting who might be witnessing their classmate tearing down the flag, who might be in the closet or coming to grips with their own sexual orientation or identity and how they are going to internalize that and how it will affect them for years to come." 

The school board's quick and unequivocal condemnation of the Banting incident should be praised, Reid said. 

It's the transgender community that is getting the most vitriol, coming from a small but vocal minority, said Richard Hudler, who joined HALO in 1976 and was involved for decades in London's gay and lesbian rights movement. 

"I look back and it wasn't until 1986 that we go in the human rights code. It was quite legal to fire us for being gay before that," he said.

"Watching what's happening is very concerning. I think the pendulum is swinging back. We have the laws to support us, but people need to have a scapegoat, and it's harder for them to directly make accusations against gays so they've got the drag queens and the trans community to attack. It's worrisome because they don't have the same protection as we do."