The Truth Comes Out

"Earlier this week, Louis Champagne, host of the top-rated morning show in the Saguenay area, taunted a local PQ candidate who is gay.

In an interview, he asked Sylvain Gaudreault, the candidate in Jonquière, whether it was harder to sell a leader with a different sexual orientation, especially to the local factory workers. 'When you show up with another homosexual, aren't you going to be asked the question, 'Listen, the PQ, isn't that a club of fags?'"....

A clip television stations replayed throughout the day yesterday showed Mr. Boisclair looking uneasy and speechless for several seconds when asked about the radio interview."

-from today's Globe and Mail

Frankly, I think I'd be a little uneasy too.

I'd always wondered why there wasn't more attention paid to the fact that Andre Boisclair could potentially become the first openly gay premier in Canadian history, and now I know why.

When you're lucky enough, as I am, to live in downtown Toronto, it's easy not just to feel secure about your own life as a gay man, but also to feel secure about the place of queers in Canada's collective life.

But there are sometimes news items - like the negative comments from at least one prominent TV pundit when Ontario's Health Minister announced he was marrying his partner, or this business about Boisclair - that makes me wonder if the anxiety my father expressed to me when I came out (that it would be hard to get a job because I was gay) didn't have a very small wrinkle of truth to it. We can have gay MPs, or even gay ministers, sure - but when the shit really hits the political fan, I wonder if old-fashioned bigotry doesn't rear its ugly head, sometimes, after all.

Sometimes gay men are criticized purportedly not because they're gay, but because they act "irresponsibly" - but irresponsibility can be aggravated, in the eyes of some, by the mere fact of sexual orientation. I don't think Boisclair, with his years of Montreal club-going, saw the danger - if he had, he probably wouldn't have been caught in that Brokeback Mountain farrago.

Hang in there, Andre: you may be an ex-coke addict and a separatist, but at least you've only ever abandoned a drug addiction, not a political party.

UPDATE: The Globe's Konrad Yakabuski goes into the gory details ($) - Andre can call me anytime!