LGBTQ advocate marks 30 years since end of ‘LGBT purge’, looks to inclusion work ahead – Edmonton Journal
![Michelle Douglas, executive director of the LGBT Purge Fund, is travelling through Canada in October to mark the 30th anniversary of her landmark legal case that ended the Canadian military's discriminatory policies against LGBTQ service members](https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/edmontonjournal/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/michelle_douglas-8_273046040-w.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=288&h=216)
Article content
Edmonton was the first stop this week in a series of events to mark three decades since the end of codified discrimination against LGBTQ people in the Canadian military, but one advocate says work to achieve inclusion is far from over.
Advertisement 2
Story continues below
Article content
Michelle Douglas is travelling through several Canadian cities this month to mark the 30th anniversary of her landmark legal case that led to stopping a discriminatory policy against gay and lesbian members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Article content
Douglas is one of the survivors of what’s known as the LGBT purge, a period between the 1950s and 1990s that saw LGBTQ employees of the federal public service, the RCMP and the CAF face harassment and discrimination because of their identity. Many, including Douglas, tried to hide who they were but were eventually forced out of their jobs as a matter of policy.
Douglas, who is now the executive director of the LGBT Purge Fund, said she wants to draw more awareness to what happened and the harms done against an estimated 9,000 people subjected to the LGBT purge.
Advertisement 3
Story continues below
Article content
“It’s a pretty shameful time in Canadian history. And if you don’t know that history, you tend to minimize the experiences that people went through and gloss over the journey that we’ve been through to get to a much better place today.”
Douglas was an officer in the CAF when her sexuality came under investigation in her workplace, and in 1989, after a traumatic interrogation, she was deemed “not advantageously employable due to homosexuality” and given an honourable discharge.
She subsequently launched a lawsuit against the Department of National Defence that ended in 1992 when the Canadian military settled the case before trial and scrapped the policy that banned those who were gay or lesbian.
That happened more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada, and nearly 20 years before the U.S. repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that banned people who were openly LGBTQ from military service.
Advertisement 4
Story continues below
Article content
But Douglas says ending harmful policies and confronting more subtle forms of discrimination are two different things, and she’s also pushing ongoing work for LGBTQ inclusion in the workplace. She hosted a closed consultation in Edmonton Tuesday with representatives from the public sector, the RCMP and Edmonton Police Service to discuss workplace inclusion efforts.
It’s especially important to keep speaking up, in her view, as she watches rising anti-transgender rhetoric in the public sphere, or just south of the border, legislation like Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” law forbidding instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in that state for children in kindergarten through Grade 3.
“Things like that lead to real violence against people,” Douglas said.
“People feel that they may have permission if they’re hearing leaders talk about people in derogatory ways, that they can pile on to that. … That’s my focus, keeping an eye on that and trying to be a leader in that space to ensure we do not roll back the hard-won achievements we’ve made so far.”