Canada should follow Germany's lead on quashing convictions of gay men: lawyer

Canada AM: Gay rights in Canada Civil Litigation Lawyer Doug Elliot looks at the issues in a Canadian context, what has been done and what still needs to happen.

Canada should follow Germany’s lead and clear the records of gay men convicted of sex crimes before and after homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, says a prominent human rights lawyer.

The German government says it will pardon more than 50,000 gay men arrested and convicted as criminals between 1946 and 1969, when the country decriminalized homosexuality. Those persecuted during Nazi rule had already been pardoned in 2002.

Germany is also considering compensation for convicted gay men.

Doug Elliott, a long-time gay rights activist and Toronto lawyer who appeared on CTV’s Canada AM Monday, says Canada also has a long history of persecuting homosexuals that must be addressed.

Though Canada removed homosexuality from the Criminal Code in 1969, 13 years before the United Kingdom and 33 ahead of the U.S., gay men, in particular, were still targeted long after.

“Like Germany, we continued to prosecute people in limited circumstances. Anal intercourse is still a crime on the books in Canada. It’s been declared unconstitutional so it’s rarely enforced but Parliament has never, ever actually repealed it. And, of course, anyone who is convicted of that offence, it’s still on their criminal record.”

Those with criminal convictions for gay sex have lost their jobs, been kicked out of the military and prevented from flying or entering the United States.

“There are lots of lingering negative impacts, not the least of which is homophobia because a criminal law signals to a society that these are bad people,” said Elliott, who was at the forefront of landmark gay marriage wins in Canada.

Eilliott says the country owes an apology to men like Everett George Klippert, who went to jail in Alberta and the Northwest Territories for gross indecency for consensual sex with other gay men. In 1967, after his second trial, he was classified as a dangerous sex offender and was sentenced to life in jail, or until he was “cured.”

Experts had testified he was no threat to the public but would likely seek out sex with other men again.

That conviction convinced then-justice minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to intervene, famously declaring: “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Klippert was eventually released in 1971, after spending 10 years in jail. He died in 1996 at the age of 69.

Another dark chapter in Canada’s treatment of gay people was the so-called “fruit machine,” an invention of a Carleton University professor that was thought to detect homosexuals. Gay people were thought to be a national security threat during the Cold War and anyone who set off the “fruit machine” lost their jobs with the federal government, law enforcement or the military.

More than 9,000 were investigated by the RCMP, says Elliott, and lives were ruined. Some were driven to suicide.

The federal government has announced it intends to review the cases of hundreds of gay men convicted of gross indecency and buggery prior to 1969 and to pardon Klippert.

But Elliott says the persecution continued well after sex laws changed, with raids on bath houses and gay bookstores and publications well into the 1990s.

Human rights advocacy group EGALE has formed a committee in Klippert’s honour to lobby for convictions to be overturned, and apologies and compensation for victims.