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Reckoning with Queer History: The Canadian 'LGBT Purge' Case and the Limits of Forgiveness

Resource type
Author/contributor
Title
Reckoning with Queer History: The Canadian 'LGBT Purge' Case and the Limits of Forgiveness
Abstract
The Canadian government has a long history of regulation, exploitation, and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and two-spirit (LGBTQ2) people. One of the most painful chapters in this history is the “LGBT Purge,” a term that refers to the expulsion of LGBTQ2 service members and employees from the Canadian Armed Forces, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and federal public service between 1955 and 1992. The LGBT Purge was the subject of a class action lawsuit filed in 2017 that resulted in a settlement agreement in 2018. On a parallel track to the settlement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a formal apology for the government’s history of state-sponsored discrimination against LGBTQ2 people in 2017. In this article, I consider these events from a legal historical and queer theoretical perspective. I focus on the potential of the settlement to promote reconciliation with LGBTQ2 people, contextualizing the settlement in light of neoliberal and homonationalist pressures on the class members to settle the past and forgive legacies of homophobic violence that continue to be felt today. Praiseworthy as the settlement terms might be, I conclude by arguing that forgiving the government’s history of discrimination against LGBTQ2 people is an historical impossibility.
Genre
SSRN Scholarly Paper
Archive ID
4843658
Place
Rochester, NY
Date
2024-05-27
Accessed
6/25/24, 8:00 PM
Short Title
Reckoning with Queer History
Language
en
Library Catalog
Social Science Research Network
Extra
Forthcoming in (2025) 62:1 Osgoode Hall Law Journal.
Citation
Del Gobbo, D. (2024). Reckoning with Queer History: The Canadian “LGBT Purge” Case and the Limits of Forgiveness (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 4843658). https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4843658
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