Originally published in TEACH Magazine, 50th Anniversary of the Decriminalization of Homosexuality in Canada Special Issue, 2019
By Elise Chenier
When the Canadian government updated the criminal code in 1954, it made a small but significant change to the law regarding gross indecency. It removed the phrase “male person.”
Gross indecency was a catch-all statute used to charge someone with behaviour deemed indecent according to the morals and values of mainstream society, but it was most commonly used against men who engaged in sexual acts with other men.
Elise Chenier is a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, where she is the founder and Director of the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (alotarchives.org). She has been researching and writing on the history of sexuality for thirty years, and is currently writing a book on same-sex marriage from the 1950s to the 1980s.
