Borderline Differences

When my spouse-partner and I cross between Canada and the United States, it is always obvious which direction we are travelling. Arriving at Toronto’s Pearson airport, we are welcomed as a couple, with one customs card, by a friendly agent who wishes us a good holiday. Coming back home, but in the airport’s U.S. pre-clearance area, he and I are separated by nationality and not even allowed to be a household for customs purposes, meeting again once we are safely through security.

More than border protection separates Canada from the United States on matters of same-sex relationships, David Rayside argues in his new book, Queer Inclusions, Continental Divisions: Public Recognition of Sexual Diversity in the United States and Canada. Director of the Mark Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, Rayside has written a thorough and well-researched study of the politics of sexual diversity in the United States and Canada. He focuses...