Once upon a time, gay liberation meant anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-police, anti-colonial rage. The bad boy (and some bad girl) heroes of the Stonewall Riots, fifty years ago this summer, linked gay visibility to global anti-colonial struggles. The Gay Liberation Front sought the abolishment of existing social institutions, including capitalism, militarism, racism, and the nuclear family. The term “liberation” tied the GLF to other radical social movements of the late 1960s, including Black Power, women’s liberation, and such anti-colonial forces as Ho Chi Minh’s National Liberation Front in Vietnam. In Canada, gay activists marched on Ottawa in 1971, demanding workplace equality and changes in the Criminal Code, divorce law, and so on. Toronto activists founded the gay liberation newspaper the Body Politic that same year. Oh, those were the days! It was a time when queer people cared about social justice and capitalist exploitation, a time before (white...
Elspeth H. Brown, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, just published Work! A Queer History of Modeling. She last wrote about the activism of M.A.C Cosmetics for the LRC.
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