The Raid at Truxx
by Madeleine Stinson
One
of the most prominent strategies for discerning the history of LGBTQ+ communities
is through the examination of criminal records, which chronicle the efforts
undertaken by the state to suppress and regulate sexuality and gender. As
guardian and promoter of LGBTQ+ history, The Quebec Gay Archives have amassed a
collection of archival fonds which illuminate the history of the individuals,
organizations and institutions whose identities have often been the targets of
persecution for simply for existing. The raid at Le Truxx Cruising Bar on
October 21st, 1977 represents a seminal moment in the history of gay
rights in Québec; the series of events that the “swoop” set in motion would
ultimately yield the ratification of Bill 88 by the Quebec National Assembly,
outlawing discrimination of the basis of sexual orientation in the province. The
raid revealed the entrenched nature of institutionalized homophobia in Quebec,
while the protest movement which took shape in the immediate aftermath of the
raid made the issue of gay rights a topic addressed by the mainstream media. The
examination of two letters to the editor which appeared in the francophone Journal de Montréal present two distinct outlooks on the
efficacy of the raids themselves and attest to the dueling views of
homosexuality at the time – either as a benign group suffering illegitimate
persecution at the hands of the state, a or as an abnormal other, threatening
the fabric of the society. this paper will argue that the raid at Truxx precipitated
a societal shift in Quebec, as socially constructed understandings of
homosexuality evolved, and institutional bias towards homosexuals was resolved
through direct political action that was mobilized by the events surrounding
the raid.
Scholars
have called the raid at Truxx as “Montreal’s very own Stonewall,” as it functioned
as a catalyzing force for activism.[i] Just as the
demonstration in New York represented a turning point in the history of gay
rights advocacy in the United States, the Truxx raid ushered in a new era of
collective gay organizing centered around the expression of frustration with
their treatment by law enforcement.[ii] The raid at
Truxx was carried out by police officers armed with machine guns and led to the
detention of almost one hundred and fifty men who were forced to submit to
compulsory tests for venereal disease, and charged with gross indecency and
being found in a bawdy house; the police justified their being armed due to the
presumed danger of homosexual “bandits.”[iii]
The arrests were the largest to be carried out in the province since Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau had initiated the War Measures Act during the October
Crisis of 1970, and inspired hundreds to protest police brutality and
discrimination the following day.[iv] The police
resorted to measures including the use of motorcycles to clear the streets, as
well as making recourse to the use of nightsticks, however the levels of
violence remained relatively low and few arrests were made.[v]
In one newspaper article which appeared in the McGill Daily details the protest, noting that it was the first
occasion that “gays in Montreal have stood up to the cops en masse.”[vi]
The raid disrupted the pre-existing, repressive system of sex law that was in
place in the province, and rendered discrepancies between sex law and
prevailing moral outlooks visible.
The
raid at Truxx can be situated within a social history of raids carried out in
Montreal between the 1960s and 1990s, which led to the arrest of over eight
hundred people in four decades and fostered a climate of tension between the LGBTQ+ community and law
enforcement.[vii]
In order to contextualize the
significance of the raid, the ensuing protest and ultimately the
anti-repressive political movement demanding freedom from sexual discrimination
that formed, two letters to the editor published in the October 27th,
1977 edition of the Journal de Montréal offer
insight concerning the moral outlooks of the time, and attest to the way in
which the raid impacted societal opinion of the gay community. The layout of
the clipping, which comes from the collection of the Quebec Gay Archives,
juxtaposes the letters one on top of the other which works to effectively
convey the dominant albeit opposing discourses related to societal views of
homosexuality of the time. The first letter, whose signatory is “Louise from
Montreal,” asserts that there are more dangerous groups than homosexuals.[viii]
Louise attributes the raids to a lack of understanding on the part of the
police, whose prejudice is reserved for homosexuals, while other criminals are
granted much greater protections and respect. She concludes her letter by
asking that the “pigs” protect the inhabitants of Montréal against real dangers
rather than targeting and terrorizing the gay community, whose only “crime” is
having alternate sexual preferences.[ix] The second letter,
submitted by Mike Desk, states that the author was “120 per cent” behind the
actions taken by the police during the protests.[x]
This letter includes several blatantly homophobic comments, such as referring
to the gay participants as idiots who are unworthy of the right to freedom of
expression. While these two letters come from two anonymous sources, it can be
assumed that they were published and positioned beside each other by the editor
of the opinion section to mirror the two sides of the debate about
homosexuality in the province of Quebec.
In
her essay “Thinking Sex: Notes for
a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” Gayle Rubin writes that every moral
panic has a dual set of consequences which affect the stigmatized population
who suffers persecution, as well as the greater society who experience the
social and legal transformations produced by the panic.[xi] The Journal
de Montréal letters exemplify the latter, as Louise and Mike Desk’s letters
grapple with the raid and protest, penning outlooks that can be translated as
positions regarding the visibility of gay bodies more generally in the late
1970s. On one hand, Mike Desk’s letter reflects an argument presented in Rubin’s
essay which asserts that the system of sex law functions in a similar way as
legalized racism as it criminalizes a group and subverts their citizenship
rights, such as disavowing their freedom of assembly and expression.[xii]
Rubin describes how members of criminalized sexual communities are used as
scapegoats by the state to preserve hegemonic power structures, making sex a
“vector of oppression.”[xiii] The
letter denigrates the gay protesters, labelling them as mentally ill and worthy
of being locked up in an institution.[xiv]
On the other, Louise’s letter illustrates Rubin’s concept of the fallacy of
misplaced scale, which construes a small difference in sexual behaviour as a
cosmic threat, due to the excess significance that sexual acts are imbued with.[xv]
Louise demands that the police dedicate themselves to prosecuting legitimate
threats to society, rather than those who deviate from the heteronormative
standard. She echoes the sentiment of Rubin’s reasoning that sex law is used by
the state to justify intervention in the lives of its citizens in a manner that
would not be acceptable in other dimensions of civilian life.[xvi]
Louise’s frustration with law enforcement embodies the ethos of the protest
movement which condemned police brutality and discrimination. This movement
mutated into direct political action; by December of the same year, because of
the lobbying efforts by the gay community, Quebec became the second society in
the world to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.[xvii]
The
raid at Truxx was a critical juncture in the historical development of Quebec’s
LGBTQ+ community, in which the gay community, through political activism, would
ultimately overcome its critics. Andrea Zanin asserts that queer community in
Montreal advanced through “protests and politics, parties and parades” and it
is events such as the 1977 raid which enabled such advancement.[xviii]
The raid created the protest and political movement that, in a similar vein as
Stonewall, led to the fist pride parades in Canada, as well as social, legal
and political change in the form of Bill 88. The two letters to the editor, one
in defense of the police action taken during the raid and the other critical of
the raid reveal how societal perspectives on homosexuality clashed in 1977, with
the state on one side and the gay community on the other. The triumph of the
gay community made Quebec a world leader in the ratification of
anti-discrimination policies. It is critical that events, such as the Truxx
raid receive their rightful place in the historical record, as the challenges
of doing queer history may sometime threaten to marginalize or erase
experiences and bodies. By engaging with historical materials such as those
preserved by the Quebec Gay Archive, it is possible to render these histories
visible, and incorporate them into the official narrative.
[i] Andrea
Zanin, “The Village Comes Out: A Quick History,” Go-Montreal, March 28, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080328224920/http://www.go-montreal.com/areas_village.htm.
[ii] Stuart
Kaplan, “The Enduring Legacy of the 1969 Stonewall Riots,” American Civil
Liberties Union, June 10, 2014.
https://www.aclu-or.org/en/news/enduring-legacy-1969-stonewall-riots.
[iii] Christopher
Bain and Steve Kowch, “City Homosexuals Protest Police Machine-Gun Raid,” Montreal Gazette, October 24, 1977.
[iv] Matthew
Hays, “Raiding History,” The Walrus,
June 28, 2016. https://thewalrus.ca/raiding-history/.
[v]
Ron Doyle, “Saturday Night: Mtl Gays Demonstrate,” McGill Daily, October 24, 1977.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii]
Jesse Feith, “Police, City Urged to Apologize for Bar Raids,” Montreal Gazette, August 11, 2017.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20170811/281530816122497.
[viii] Louise
de Montreal, letter to the editor, Journal
de Montréal, October 27, 1977.
[ix]
Ibid.
[x]
Mike Desk, letter to the editor, Journal
de Montréal, October 27, 1977.
[xi] Gayle
Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,”
Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay
Studies: A Reader, eds. Peter M. Nardi and Beth E. Schneider (London:
Routledge, 1998): 54.
[xii] Ibid.,
52.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Rubin,
“Thinking Sex,” 52.
[xv]
Ibid., 44.
[xvi] Ibid.,
50.
[xvii]
Zanin, “The Village Comes Out.”
[xviii] Ibid.
Bibliography
Bain, Christopher and Kowch, Steve. “City Homosexuals
Protest Police Machine-Gun Raid.” Montreal Gazette. October 24, 1977.
Doyle, Ron. “Saturday Night: Mtl Gays Demonstrate.” McGill Daily. October 24, 1977.
Desk, Mike. Letter to the editor. Journal de Montréal. October 27, 1977.
Feith, Jesse. “ Police, City Urged to Apologize for Bar
Raids.” Montreal Gazette. August 11, 2017.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montrealgazette/20170811/2815308161224 97.
Hays, Matthew. “Raiding History.” The Walrus. June 28, 2016. https://thewalrus.ca/raiding- history/.
Kaplan, Stuart. “The Enduring Legacy of the 1969 Stonewall
Riots.” American Civil Liberties Union.
June 10, 2014. https://www.aclu-or.org/en/news/enduring-legacy-1969-stonewall- riots.
Louise de Montreal. Letter to the editor. Journal de Montréal. October 27, 1977.
Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the
Politics of Sexuality.” Social Perspectives
in Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Reader. Eds. Peter M. Nardi and Beth E. Schneider.
London: Routledge, 1984.
Zanin, Andrea. “The Village Comes Out: A Quick History.”
Go-Montreal. March 28, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080328224920/http://www.go-montreal.com/areas_villag e.htm.
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