by RAF KATIGBAK

Unless you have just been cryogenically unfrozen or have vowed never to step foot on Ste-Catherine street for fear of the extremely pungent stench currently wafting up from our city’s alleyways (can we PLEASE get a petition going for the city to irradiate the alley next to Burger King?), you may have noticed an increased number of gender-matched pairs, often with spiky hair, proudly holding hands as they peruse the downtown core.

With the closure of last week’s Outgames conveniently timed with our city’s Pride celebration (which, in a strange twist of fate, was also timed with the landing of a ship in Montreal’s Old Port from which hundreds of young hot Greek sailors in uniform came ashore, further evidence for some that if a higher power indeed exists, s/he must certainly have a lisp), Montreal’s queer quotient was raised from “fabulous” to “fierce” as the city’s gay community once again blocked off the village and showed visiting athletes and tourists what it means to live it up Montreal-style.

But even outside of the village, gay and lesbian couples proudly wandered the streets hand in hand with impunity. A sight that filled yours truly with a deep swell of Montreal pride (not that I’m gay or anything, I mean, I have nothing against gay people, I mean, some of my best friends...).

I’m proud because if there was anything that I learned from my father (a self-professed social butterfly), it’s 1) always try to make your guests feel at home, and 2) the best way to do that is to get them drunk and then wheel out the karaoke machine. While I’m not about to dust off the ol’ Minus-One Sing Along System (sadly I’ve lost most of the tapes), the fact that people can feel safe and secure enough to be who they want to be in this city—my city—is something I hold dear.

But Montreal is so open that when I witness homophobic slights, I’m actually stunned to be reminded that it still exists. On a recent flight to New York, one particularly meat-headed security agent at Trudeau airport snidely asked his straight co-worker if he was going to the Outgames. As if that in itself meant that he was gay (and even if he was, so what?).

That’s also why I was so miffed to hear about Laval’s straight Outgames water polo team’s homophobic jokes in the locker room after last week’s match with London, England’s Out to Swim team. For those who haven’t heard, the incident happened in the showers after the game when four Laval players joked in French about not lingering too long lest they get gangbanged by the opposition. Little did they know, one of the other team was a French-speaking former Montrealer who didn’t find the joke so funny.

Of course, part of me is not surprised; locker room gay jokes are extremely common in the jockish über-masculine world of water polo. Wait a second... water polo? Isn’t that already the gayest sport in the world? How can four Laval athletes who have dedicated their free time to wading in a pool and splashing about with other muscley dudes going after slippery balls ever have licence to make a gay joke? I’m sorry, but you guys pretty much are gay in my book. Just be proud and shout it out loud already.

But of course homophobia in Canada is not a new thing. While we like to think of ourselves as a bastion of liberal thinking in North America, the truth is at one point, like most of the Western world, many Canadians thought homosexuality was a disease or psychiatric problem. For some seriously eye-opening truth, peep the CBC.com archives “Gay and Lesbian Emergence: Out in Canada” for videos from the ’50s where little old ladies are all, “They should be locked up!” Daaaamn!!

While we’ve made some advancement in realms like medical ethics (free health care=good, military-funded LSD experiments on students and musicians=bad), why can’t we get the whole “live and let live” thing totally right? Is it so impossible to imagine a day when everyone in Montreal can just do their harmless thing without fear of snide remark or worse, physical attack? Or is that idea just totally gay?

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca

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