The personal blog of Matt Guerin, loving husband, supervisor, writer, filmmaker, political junkie, union supporter based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
mattfggg on IS, @Enlightened1972 on x
I want to express my best wishes to Christopher, George and their family at this time as they move forward with their lives. I also hope the public and the media give them the dignity and respect they deserve.
"The path forward isn’t firmly clear except that we know that it’s long and it will be hard," said Smitherman today at a press conference.
“(Christopher) and me and our family and our kids especially will be surrounded by an outpouring of love and they will restore anybody’s faith and confidence,” said Smitherman.
About 100 people turned up this evening in Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square (pictured above and below) to rally and show support for their fellow queers in other countries. I was glad to be among them. The most touching moments were hearing letters of thanks from LGBT activists in Russia and elsewhere where they live in fear of being targeted by anti-gay laws and rampant homophobia and violence.
Once the rally took place, the group marched down Yonge Street briefly stopping traffic en route to the TIFF Bell Lightbox building at King and John in downtown Toronto to send a message during Toronto's high profile international film festival. (A sore foot made it impossible for me to join them on the march tonight, but I was there in spirit.)
The struggle continues but these types of public protests against ignorance send the right message both in our own country and across the world.
I have been delighted this week to read about the story of Wren Kauffman, an 11-year-old Edmonton boy who went back to school this week like most kids his age. The amazing part of this story is that Wren returned to school after he had been known as a girl named Wrenna. This school year marked the end of hiding for him.
What a beautiful kid! I'm so proud of him and his family for supporting him in this amazing decision.
The story also reminds me of a dear friend, Kyle Scanlon, who was also transgendered and often told me how he felt quite awkward while growing up. Born female with the name 'Kelly', Kyle said he too looked at himself as a boy, not a girl while growing up. The onset of puberty and its hormonal changes brought on a deep depression that lasted for Kyle for years. Only later as an adult (a couple years after I met him) was Kyle able to undergo gender re-assignment surgery and finally become the man he was meant to be.
Sadly, even this transformation didn't help Kyle handle all of his personal demons and he chose to end his own life in 2012. So watching this story this week about this amazing 11-year-old boy who has support from his family, his classmates and his school to come out as transgendered provides some great relief and hope.
If indeed school boards across Canada are starting to work out how to accommodate and support transgendered students (and make no mistake, there are many such students struggling in our schools right now), then that is a fantastic thing and most needed!
"As concerned as we are about the Olympics, that's nothing. That's two, three, four weeks for the athletes and participants and the visitors," Baird said in a telephone interview from Colombia with CBC.
"This mean-spirited and hateful law will affect all Russians 365 days of the year, every year. It is an incitement to intolerance, which breeds hate. And intolerance and hate breed violence."
Baird did not endorse recent calls for a boycott but said Russia's hosting of the Olympics would draw attention to the issue.
"In the run-up to the Olympics, it provides a spotlight on this mean-spirited and hateful law," Baird said. "Hopefully, we can use that spotlight to bring pressure to bear on the Russian government."
I do support boycotting all Russian products including vodkas to put pressure on that foolish country to reverse these hateful laws. I also think athletes should put aside their massive ambitions and consider for a moment the moral implications of competing in a Games in a country that treats its minorities this way. For me, it's like refusing to stop eating at a 'No Jews Allowed' restaurant just because you can't get enough of the food.
A no-name Tory MP's private member's bill passed the Senate this week and received Royal Assent. When the bill is fully implemented within a year, Section 13 of Canadian human rights law that permitted rights complaints to the federal Human Rights Commission for “the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet” will be history.
Now victims of hate speech over the internet or over the phone will have no recourse except to wait for police forces with little or no hate crime budgets to go after hate mongers in Canada. And even then charges can't be laid until Attorneys General give approval, which usually dissuades police from seriously pursuing the criminals.
Anti-hate provisions in the Human Rights Act empowered victims to fight back for themselves against the bigots. Those guilty were frequently found guilty, unlike in the criminal courts where convictions have been much more difficult to achieve.
By taking away this option for victims under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and at the same time ignoring the demand that police themselves should be given the ability to lay hate speech charges instead of relying on Attorneys General, the Conservatives have shown their true priorities.
Conservatives are siding with the bigots.
By passing this bill, the Conservatives have taken away victims' rights and made it easier to get away with (hate) crime in Canada. Yes, you read that correctly. It's shameful.
After a very successful inaugural run in 2012, I'm very proud to be organizing the Canadian Media Guild's 2nd Toronto Pride Week LGBT Short Film Festival, which starts tomorrow. I've been working with other CMG volunteers to select a collection of great recent short films with LGBT themes, contact filmmakers or distributors to arrange to receive screening copies and working with CBC colleagues to make it happen. Again, it's been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
The festival highlights a number of excellent short films from recent years, including some award winners. The diverse 107-minute program will play continuously on a DVD loop in the Graham Spry Theatre in Toronto between 9 am and 9 pm from Monday June 24th to Friday June 28th (with an extra screening on Saturday June 29th from 12 pm to 5 pm.) The theatre is located near the Wellington Street entrance of the CBC Broadcast Centre.
And most important: ADMISSION IS FREE!
Details:
Monday, June 24, 2013 to Friday, June 28, 2013 from 9 am to 9 pm.
Saturday, June 29, 2013 from 12 pm to 5 pm.
Graham Spry Theatre, 1st floor of the CBC Broadcasting Centre
250 Front St. W., Toronto, Ontario
If you are in the Toronto area this week and want to check out some great LGBT short films, please consider dropping by!
The 23rd Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival wraps today. I've been a patron of the festival since I moved to Toronto in the 1990s. This year was a great success on many fronts with many good films getting a Toronto or Canadian premiere.
I took in seven programs which included a handful of short films and five new feature films. I missed the opening night feature, 'In the Name of,' and also the Centrepiece gala feature, 'Pit Stop,' due to schedule conflicts and the steep price for tickets. I'll get a chance to see both in the future, I'm sure.
But here's my take on what I did see:
My favourite feature film in the festival: 'The Go Doc Project,' by director Cory James Krueckeberg. This mockumentary about a cute, young New Yorker who concocts his own fake documentary film to get closer to the object of his obsession, a hot go-go boy, charmed me with its technical ingenuity and solid story telling, not to mention the charming and surprising love story between the boys. The title is a play on the two lead characters' names, Go, the go-go boy, and Doc, the socially awkward soon-to-be college graduate. The two lead actors, Tanner Cohen and Matthew Camp (who is a real life go-go boy), are adorable and deliver surprisingly decent performances. The film is by the same team who brought us the wonderful 'Were the World Mine' a few years back, which also starred Cohen.
For an independent gay feature, 'The Go Doc Project' delivers everything one wants: cute boys, an engaging love story and beautiful imagery, including a very hot sex scene and much nudity (see the hot pic on the right). It was shot entirely using low-end cameras by the actors themselves, but still looked terrific! I especially loved the long montage of the boys kissing in several famous NYC locations, obviously filmed in guerrilla style and probably without the usual permits. This sends a delightful message to other independent queer filmmakers: get a good concept, hire some talented and adorable leads and you can make a hit film for pennies compared to Hollywood's big budgets and still find an audience. You can find out more about the film here.
I also saw and loved director Alan Brown's latest 'Five Dances.' (pictured below). It's a close second place in my estimation of the features I saw this past week.
This film concerns a young man, played by Ryan Steele, with zero support from his family struggling to make it as a dancer in New York City. Not out of the closet, he gets hired to take part in a five-person show where he meets a fellow male dancer with whom he begins a hot affair. It, too, was remarkably romantic and sweet, themes I definitely noticed in several films at Inside Out this year.
I saw and enjoyed the German feature 'Free Fall,' about a cop trainee who falls in love with another gay man on the force despite having a pregnant wife. The two male leads were exceedingly easy on the eyes, and the story was compelling if not overly original. Also interesting was the Spanish film, 'Animals,' about a troubled 17-year-old boy who can't seem to let go of his childhood fears. The Donnie Darko ripoff was beautifully shot and well-acted, but left me confused and disappointed. Perhaps my own need to see troubled characters find some kind of redemption or resolution is clouding my feelings about this interesting failure of a film. But I can't say that I recommend it.
I also finally got to see James Franco's hybrid drama-documentary 'Interior. Leather Bar,' (pictured.) Written and co-directed by Travis Mathews, it was a fascinating experiment that explored issues around homophobia in general, and in Hollywood in particular, using the re-enactment of 40 minutes of censored footage from William Friedkin's 1980 homophobic classic 'Cruising' as a launching pad. Franco's film isn't so much concerned with actually re-enacting the missing footage that was apparently cut from 'Cruising' because it was too risque. Instead, Franco and Mathews are more concerned with emphasizing the anxieties of their recruited group of handsome, mostly-straight actors, led by sexy Val Lauren (playing the Al Pacino character), about playing it gay in a film containing explicit gay sex. Some of the scenes in the film were apparently scripted, others completely improvised. In one key scene between Lauren and Franco, the director explains that he's trying, with this project, to turn around the despicable homophobia on display in the original 'Cruising' into something that is instead "beautiful" and positive. On that score, Franco and Mathews largely succeed. The result is an interesting statement and wonderful antidote to the original film which inspired it. Although I'm sure this film won't be to everyone's liking.
I also saw a number of short films which impressed me. 'For Dorian' by Toronto director Rodrigo Barriuso, about a single father who discovers that his adolescent, developmentally-disabled son is gay, was unbelievably beautiful. Director Alyssa Pankiw's 'Her With Me', about a young lesbian who picks up a Hollywood actress, was charming and sexy. F-T-M director Chase Joynt's 'I'm Yours' featuring himself and M-T-F transsexual activist Nina Arsenault answering a series of identical, personal questions was fascinating and illuminating. Director Ryan Levey's moving short 'The Closest Thing To Heaven' about an older gay man's reminiscing about his late partner was stellar and beautifully told. And Toronto director Steven Bereznai's 'Let's Get Soaking Wet' was a delightful exploration of gay male anxieties around participating in group sports, something I can relate to. I'm hoping to program all of these shorts into the Canadian Media Guild's 2nd annual Pride Week LGBT Short Film Festival later this month. Stay tuned for more on that soon!
I recently did an interview with the Latino queer website UniversoGay about my short film, 'The Golden Pin,' which has turned into a hit on YouTube. I posted the 16-minute short film there on October 24, 2012, and in six short months, it's attracted over 900,000 views! At this rate, we might be at 1 million views by the middle of June!
How did you came up with the idea of the short film at the first place?
Director Cuong Ngo and myself decided we wanted to work together on a short film for his final year in film studies at York University in 2008. We decided to tackle a love story idea in which one closeted man was involved with an openly gay man. At one point, Cuong recommended to me that I write in a swim scene and the result was the first draft of 'The Golden Pin.' He and I worked back and forth on the script for several weeks until it was ready and we shot it in December 2008.
The idea was a short film and then become a movie?
Yes, we wrote the short film's script with the idea that one day we'd expand the story into a feature film.
It was based in a real story that you know or someone told you?
Cuong Ngo is Vietnamese, so he wanted to explore an Asian male character who was struggling in the closet under pressure to marry a woman and have children to continue the family line. The story we came up with wasn't based on any one person in particular, but more about a general struggle many young queer people face in their lives.
In many countries they are debating gay marriage. Do you think that with the topic installed at the society will change the mentality, like the father´s main character?
I do agree as same sex marriage becomes legalized in more and more countries, it will slowly continue to change the cultures of those countries. Canada has had equal marriage since 2003. Queer people do have the option of lifelong partnership formalized in marriage. The passage of equal marriage signifies that the society has embraced true equality in law for all people, including queer people. It also means the culture doesn't denigrate queer people and instead gives them the freedom to be happy as they see fit.
The short film had an open ending. At least I think that. Was it on purpose to make a movie later to complete the story?
Yes, it was on purpose leaving the ending of the short film open-ended. The short is just 16 minutes, so we didn't feel it was right to present an entire character arc including a full resolution in such a short time. We simply wanted to present a character caught in a dilemma that many queer people face. We also wanted to universalize the dilemma somewhat by showing the mother character having also been unhappy in her own life choices. In the short film, we simply wanted to ask the audience the question, "What would you do in these circumstances?" We didn't want to give the audience the answer as well. We want the audience to decide for themselves.
Since we have always planned to make a feature film, we are planning a longer storyline that does answer the main character's dilemma. So stay tuned with the feature film.
How was the casting, the locations, etc? The movie will be with the same people?
Cuong Ngo chose the actors to be in the short film and they did a wonderful job! Our team worked together to find the right locations all of them in Toronto. The feature film version will likely also be shot in Toronto. But we have made no casting choices about the feature film at this point.
Oriental and Occidental society and culture are different. Was different to the reaction in that places to the short movie?
The short film has resonated in many Asian countries and played in many festivals in those regions. Currently, the short film has almost 900,000 hits on YouTube and a huge number of views have come from Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan. The YouTube video is banned in China where it's only had 16 hits. But the response from the rest of Asia to it has been strong.
Incidentally, the short film also has a large following in Saudi Arabia and Mexico, and the audience is building nicely in India as well. Of course, the most views are in the United States. The short film has struck a chord right across the world and we're very proud of that.
Any memories, funny for example or significant, that you can tell us about the filming?
The costume designers noticed the night we were shooting the swimming pool scenes with the very handsome swimmers that their Speedos were a bit loose. We worried they wouldn't stay on the swimmers in the water, so we drove quickly to a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart in order to buy safety pins. The costume people used the safety pins to tighten the Speedos on our swimmers to make sure they didn't fall off in the pool. And they mostly worked, although one swimmer has a slight problem in one shot that you can see in the short film.
I'm quite pleased with this morning's ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada against Bill Whatcott's dissemination of hateful, anti-gay flyers in Saskatchewan in 2001 and 2002. Whatcott had been found guilty of breaking the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code's hate speech provisions and fined thousands of dollars in penalties. However, an appeal court overrruled that finding in 2010. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission then appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which heard the case in October 2011. I wrote about this case then.
Today's ruling is a great read. I hope the media editorialists who defended Whatcott's ability to publish and distribute these hateful flyers (one of which used the words "Kill the Homosexuals") take the time to read it and get educated about the harmful effects of hate speech.
The Supreme Court ruled today the Human Rights Code's ban on speech that exposes an identifiable group to hatred as valid. In so doing, it likely reinforced similar anti-hate speech provisions elsewhere in Canada's laws. The Court also ruled that other vague wording in Saskatchewan’s hate law, which bans speech that “ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of,” was constitutionally invalid.
The Supreme Court concluded that two of Whatcott's flyers constituted prohibited hate speech and he must now pay $7,500 of his original $17,500 in fines. In the judgment, Justice Rothstein writes: "Passages of these flyers combine many of the hallmarks of hatred identified in the case law...The expression portrays the targeted group as a menace that threatens the safety and well-being of others, makes reference to respected sources in an effort to lend credibility to the negative generalizations, and uses vilifying and derogatory representations to create a tone of hatred.”
The SCOC also awarded the Saskatchewan Commission "costs throughout, including costs of the application for leave to appeal in this Court."
In the past, I've argued that only speech that objectively "incites violence" against an identifiable and protected group should constitute illegal hate speech. The Supreme Court seems to argue that simply exposing such groups to "hatred" as they define clearly in the ruling is sufficient for finding the speech illegal. This is broader than my own definition. But I see the great wisdom in it. I support today's ruling. It will greatly instruct the ongoing debate about what actions governments may take to prevent the harmful and very real effects of hate speech in our free and democratic society.
When Kathleen Wynne won the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in late January, it was historic. Not only would Ontario have its first female premier, Canada would also have its first "openly gay" premier.
They didn't refer to her as Canada's first "gay" premier because, in fact, she wasn't. We know that former New Brunswick premier Richard Hatfield was most likely gay, but not out of the closet. For all we know, there were probably other premiers and even prime ministers in Canada who were gay. We just have no idea as they didn't publicly confirm such things in the past.
Mid-February, the media are using 'Ontario's first woman premier' or 'Ontario's first openly gay premier' less to describe Wynne and simply are calling her 'Premier Kathleen Wynne.' I hope that continues.
A queer colleague and friend commented to me this week that she's getting irritated by the media's constant refrain 'Ontario's first openly gay premier' to describe Wynne. Why can't they simply use the term 'Ontario's first out premier,' she pondered. I agreed with her.
Do we call Joe Oliver Canada's first openly Jewish minister of natural resources? Do we call Alison Redford Alberta's first "openly female" premier? Then why must we still refer to Wynne as 'Canada's first openly gay premier'? I would suggest that the media soon drop this description and simply, if they must, call her 'Canada's first out premier.'
If readers don't know what "out" means, they can always do a little research to find out.
This evangelical group has been receiving hundreds of thousands of Canadian tax dollars for aid projects in Uganda, a country currently considering killing its homosexuals. The Canadian group has reportedly been providing water to Ugandan citizens. This kind of work is admirable, even in a place as backwards as Uganda.
But Crossroads is an evangelical group that believes some abhorrent things about people who are born LGBT, including myself. Reportedly this group used to advertise on its website that "homosexuality and transvestism" are perversions along the lines of pedophilia and bestiality. This is hateful and completely wrong.
Being Catholic (or any other form of moderate Christianity) is not the same thing as being Evangelical. Especially in Canada. Full stop.
Evangelicals take every word that was written by bigoted men centuries ago in both the Old and New Testaments as the unquestionable word of God, Herself. Doing so means that Evangelicals are forced to believe some very strange things, as we know. I won't get into all of them. But of course, these include supporting violence against women, murder, slavery and many other forms of crimes against humanity.
Evangelicals cling to every single word in their Bibles out of fear of eternal damnation. And they condemn the rest of us to hell for not joining them.
Other moderate Christians like most Canadian Catholics take a different approach. They don't believe every word in the Bible. They also don't believe every utterance from church leadership including in the Catholic catechism. Catholics like most religious people form their own conclusions and think for themselves. They can reference the church's beliefs or statements, but they are not beholden to them. They are not forced to believe every single word written by old bigots centuries ago simply because someone in power in their church told them to do so.
The vast majority of Canadian Catholics have beliefs that contradict the beliefs of outgoing Pope Benedict. The core of their beliefs are to be found in their interpretations of the Gospels and the loving, inclusive, socialist messages of Christ.
This feeble attempt by Lilley and others to equate Evangelicals with other reasonable, thoughtful Christians simply won't wash.
Mulcair can call himself a Catholic, go to church as often as he wants and still call the hateful comments of Evangelicals "un-Canadian". Because they are.
