About Canada: Queer Rights

Download or read book About Canada: Queer Rights written by Peter Knegt and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-01T00:00:00Z with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Canada a “queer utopia”? Canada was the fourth country in the world – and the first in the Western Hemisphere – to legalize same-sex marriage. Queer people in Canada enjoy many of the same legal rights as heterosexuals, and social acceptance of homosexuality has grown exponentially. But are these the goals that queer activists hoped to achieve? Is this legal regulation and normalization of homosexuality what the lesbian and gay liberation movement of the early 1970s fought for? Using the origins of this movement as a starting point, About Canada: Queer Rights examines the history of the struggle for queer rights in Canada to create a better understanding of the present. What Peter Knegt finds is that Canada’s queer people are as diverse and multicultural as Canada itself – they are not easily generalized and have most certainly not achieved equality.