Canada Repeals its Historic Indecency Laws
In March of 2023, Canada finally expunged its historic indecency laws. This comes decades after it was used to perform many raids that targeted the LGBTQ+ community.Toronto Bathhouse Raids
After years of smaller raids performed by the Metropolitan police against Toronto’s gay community, one of the largest raids occurred on February 5th, 1981. This large raid was called the Toronto Bathhouse Raid. Under the name “Operation Soap,” the raids took place across four alleged bawly houses running as bathhouses located in Toronto.By the end of “Operation Soap,” 286 men were charged with various accusations by the police, primarily related to sex work and other “indecent acts,” despite the lack of evidence of sex work taking place. Most of these men were found not guilty and the charges were dropped.
This blatant discrimination of the gay community was one of many events that encouraged a community response of large proportion.
Yonge and Wellesley street welcomed 3,000 people…
The following night at midnight, a marching protest began at Yonge and Wellesley an travelled to the 52 Division police station, peaking at over 3,000 participants. This was a large turnout for a time period when landline telephones were the primary source of communication.A blockade of 200 police officers met the marching protestors at the police station, which encouraged the march to divert towards the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. As with any large gathering, violence did break out in a few areas, but injuries were rarely reported as a result.
Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star proved themselves to be bigoted news agencies of the time; the former accusing the Globe and Mail of spouting nonsense when they published the news with journalistic integrity. The latter proudly named victims of the smaller police raids leading up to this monumental raid.
Although bathhouse raids continued amongst the noted homosexual/gay bathhouses up until September 2000; these protests against police violence and unjust police tactics were successful in garnering support from Toronto citizens and allowed for more civil rights movements to continue.
The initialism LGB was introduced shortly after the protest that took place, though the initialism is difficult to pin down for Canadian-specific history.