How to Organize in a Plague
About this episode
The episode discusses the challenges faced by the LGBTQ community in Toronto during the early 1980s amidst rising homophobia and the onset of a disease outbreak.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca If you were an openly gay man in Toronto in 1980, chances are that you would’ve thought that life was getting better. After all, the last decade had seen so much progress. Homosexuality had been partially decriminalized back in the late 1960s. A few years later, Toronto had become the first city in the country to ban homophobic discrimination in municipal hiring. Pride parades and festivals were a regular occurrence. There was a thriving queer nightlife and queer press and queer arts scene. George Hislop, an out-and-proud gay man, was running for city council, and even the sitting mayor, John Sewell, was pro-gay. Was there still discrimination and hardship? Of course. But more and more people were coming out of the closet, and even the broader society was starting to slowly embrace people with different sexual orientations. But then, things started to change. George Hislop lost his run and so did John Sewell, largely because of homophobic attacks in the press. In 1981, the Toronto Police launched Operation Soap , raiding multiple gay bathhouses and arresting almost 300 men. And though the community…
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