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BRAUN: Toronto bathhouse raids helped mobilize gay community

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This Friday marks the 40th anniversary of the infamous Toronto bathhouse raids.

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On that day in 1981, hundreds of police officers descended upon four gay bathhouses in the city and arrested 306 people.

The police, some armed with sledgehammers for the raid, smashed their way through the various clubs, destroying property.

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And destroying lives. Police arrested and exposed men who were not “out” to family or employers. First person accounts of the events detail the violence and humiliation meted out by officers.

This police assault and invasion of privacy stunned the general populace. Forty years seems like a long time ago, but people were the same then as they are now.

And most saw the police action as unconscionable.

The events of that February night were so repugnant that in June 2016, then-police chief Mark Saunders apologized for the actions of the police during the raids.

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At the time, these events galvanized the gay community. The bathhouse raids are considered Canada’s Stonewall Uprising, the 1969 protest events in New York that were likewise ignited by a last-straw police raid.

In Toronto, on the day after the raids, thousands gathered in the Yonge-Wellesley Sts. neighbourhood for a demonstration against police brutality. It was a turning point, a catalyst for unity and activism in the LGBTQ+ community.

The bathhouse raids led directly to the establishment of Pride Toronto that June, although what is now a month-long celebration began then as one day in Grange Park.

York University history professor Tom Hooper says it’s important to look at the bigger picture when considering the bathhouse raids — they were just one incident of many.

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“This sort of raid was a long-standing practise in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, all through the 1970s,” said Hooper.

In fact, an earlier raid on The Barracks in 1978 had already motivated the gay community to get organized, “And they were ready to go in 1981.”

Bill C-150 had decriminalized same-sex relations in 1969, but those so-called reforms didn’t change anything. Adults engaging in consensual sex were still being charged with gross indecency or under the bawdy-house laws if found in a bathhouse or gay bar.

“The bathhouse raids have to be seen in the context of the harassment on a day-to-day basis people were subjected to,” said Hooper.

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That harassment included raids on parks, bars and other public spaces; police even hid themselves in public washrooms to catch people in the act and arrest them for gross indecency.

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“A bigger story beyond the raids in Toronto was the homophobic reaction to the rise of the gay community, the asserting of greater legitimacy.”

At this 40th anniversary of the bathhouse raids, it would be great to be able to say these incidents between police and the gay community are part of the past, but they aren’t.

Not too long after that 2016 formal apology for the raids, police were busy hanging around undercover in Marie Curtis park because of complaints of public sexual encounters.

“Their response was to put undercover agents in the bushes. For entrapment. The community reaction was the same as it was in 1981,” said Hooper. Indeed it was. People were appalled.

For more about the bathhouse raids, it’s worth watching Harry Sutherland’s 1982 documentary, Track Two; in 2014, well-known activist Ken Popert of Pink Triangle Press had the film digitized and reissued to make sure it was not lost to history.

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As Popert told Xtra Magazine at the time, the bathhouse raids were a formative event.

“You can’t understand the gay community’s current relationship to our society without knowing that event.”

Excerpts from Track Two can be seen on YouTube.

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