NLGJA Insight

By Anthony Williams
NLGJA InSight staff writer

Canada has granted gays and lesbians more equal rights than the United States for years now, including same-sex marriage and allowing LGBT soldiers to serve openly in the military. Even with those advances, though, experts say homophobia is far from dead and still hurting gay youth.

Kathleen Weil, Quebec’s minister of justice, is pushing a government policy against homophobia after a commissioned report from the former provincial justice minister showed that gay and bisexual youth were six to 16 times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers.

That’s more than double American statistics.

The Trevor Project, an organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among LGBT youth in the United States, cites a 2006 Massachusetts study that said gay youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide. Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are just below that.

Philippe Archambault, press secretary for Weil, said Quebec has always been open and one step ahead of other governments, and the proposed policy against homophobia is another example of that.

“We’ll be one of the first states in North America to have that kind of policy,” he said. “There will be a lot of publicity. It’ll be a big thing against homophobia in Quebec.”

Beansie Saretsky, a junior at McGill University, is a member of the school’s gay student group, Queer McGill. Growing up in Calgary in western Canada, she said she appreciates living in an urban area like Montreal that’s more accepting.

“Montreal is a great city to be queer in because it is very open and there are plenty of opportunities to socialize and be with people who are like you in an open environment,” Saretsky said, “compared to places on the prairies, where you might feel more uncomfortable being out in public.”

Gai Écoute, or Gay Line in English, is a center with phone lines for information and help for gays and lesbians in Quebec. Director Laurent Gosselin said statistics on gay youth suicide differ in numerous surveys.

The organization compiled its own information from one survey done in Calgary that showed 62.5 percent of young men who had attempted suicide were gay or bisexual, while gays only made up 13 percent of the total sample.

That 1997 study concluded that young gay and bisexual men ages 18 to 27 were 14 times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight friends, which Gai Écoute said was in line with a 1978 study that said young gay men were 13 times more likely to make a suicidal act.

Saretsky said she didn’t begin identifying as gay until she got to college, but said she rarely saw same-sex couples on the Calgary streets, and knew of only one gay club.

“It’s harder to meet people I think,” she said. “It’s a big city, but there isn’t much gay culture. People aren’t openly hostile or anything, but it’s not as welcoming as it is in Montreal.”

The Canadian Association for Education and Outreach in Quebec provides services for Montreal’s English-speaking LGBT community, including a phone hotline and SILK – Sexual Information Leads to Knowledge – where the group talks to students in the city’s 65 English schools.

CAEO Quebec President Nick Frate said they don’t get many calls from youth contemplating suicide – there were three in the last 12 months – but he said there are numerous suicide hotlines across the area, including the city’s own.

But with regards to the statistics, Frate said homophobia is a problem in the rest of Quebec, not the city. There are 7 million people in the province, and four million of those people live in Montreal, he said.

“There’s still a lot of homophobia in the (outer) region where they may not have any gay bars, let alone gay-straight alliances in their schools,” Frate said.

Line Chamberland, sexology professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, is finishing up a study for the human rights commission on homophobia in schools. While not yet complete, she said it appeared that a quarter of all students are in one way or another victimized on the basis of their sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation.

Chamberland said gender non-conformity is falsely interpreted as homosexuality and a cause of ridicule and bullying, but she said there have been studies in Quebec indicating the stress adolescents and their families go through in those situations when living in small cities or villages.

“In a big city it’s more anonymous,” Chamberland said.

Fred Kuhr, a writer for Press Pass Q in Toronto, echoed Frate and Chamberland in saying there is a “grand rural-urban divide in Quebec and all of Canada.

“Yes, in metropolitan areas like Toronto and Montreal there are huge amounts of understanding and acceptance,” Kuhr said, but outside of those cities, “(the gay) experience can be very different.”