LGBTQ

June is Pride month, with June 28th acknowledged as Pride Day. In Canada it is a celebration of the LGBTQ communities and to recognize their right to marry, to adopt and legal equality.  

I recently heard a young man speak of the LGBTQ community as his family. He said he was a "G" in that community. He was making a plea for people to accept his family and to stop the violence towards them. His words impacted me, and I decided from that moment forward I was going to be more aware of this community. I needed to practice what I preach and embrace, "knowledge is power". I knew I needed to be more informed and to know better to do better. 

I am not proud to say that I would stumble over the acronym. I felt a good starting spot was to make sure I could smoothly say "LGBTQ" and to truly have an understanding what each letter stood for.   

L stands for Lesbian.  The definition means a woman who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards other women.

G stands for Gay. Being gay is identified as someone that is exclusively attracted sexually or romantically to one's own sex or gender. Used exclusively for males, women can also be referred to as gay. Homosexual has the same meaning as gay.

B stands for Bisexual.  This group of people are attracted romantically and sexually to both genders. 

T stands for transgender. A transgender person is someone whose gender expression is different than the sex they were born with. 

Q stands for Queer. This group of people do not correspond to established ideas of heterosexual norms. It is an umbrella term for anyone who is anything but straight.

There are one million people in Canada that have identified themselves in the LGBTQ community. Thirty percent of the members are 14-25 years of age and only 7 percent are over 65. This indicates to me that younger people are feeling comfortable in identifying their sexual orientation as opposed to the way it was for the 65-year old's. Thank goodness for that. Homosexuality has always been around, declaring your sexual identity has not. When I was in high school in the 70s it was definitely hidden. I am not sure when that all changed. Granted, small town Saskatchewan was probably late in understanding homosexuality. People that struggled with their sexual identity were at one time, considered to have a mental illness. 

                                      

In 2003, Ontario and British Columbia were the first provinces to legalize the licensing of same-sex marriage. A federal Act came into force in 2005, which made same-sex marriages legal across Canada. Canada was the fourth country in the world to permit same-sex marriages, after Netherlands (2000), Belgium (2003) and Spain in (2005). In 2003, Canada was the only country in the world that allowed same-sex marriages between people who were not residents. I do hope now, 20 years later, we are simply saying "a couple is getting married". We have never referred to marriage as, "opposite-sex" so why say "same-sex". 

It really saddens me that people are victimized because they are deemed different in the attacker's eyes. I just want people to live the life they want and to be happy. I do not care who you chose to be your partner. I am just so glad that people aren't locked in a body, or a relationship, that they don't want to be in. They are now free to share their secret, and to be accepted as the person they want to be.  

In closing, I want to write about the Netflix documentary, "A Secret Love". It is about two women from Saskatchewan.  Terry Donahue was born in 1925 at Melaval, Saskatchewan. She became a catcher for the Peoria Redwings, which was one of the American Ladies Baseball teams that played during the war. Terry met Pat Henschel in Moose Jaw in the 40s. They began an inseparable relationship that spanned six decades.  

The documentary reveals that Terry didn't realize she was gay until she met Pat, on a dairy farm in Cabri, Sask. The couple knew that they had to keep their relationship secret from their families and the baseball league. They lived together in Chicago for over 50 years. Living so far away made them feel safe from pressures and questions from family. They knew it would have been easier to live freely but they feared being discovered and deported. They told the family it was cheaper to live together as friends, and they told friends they were cousins. 

Once the women reached their 80s and their health began to fail, they decided to share their story. They agreed to do a documentary about what was referred to as a forbidden romance. The couple had taken lots of pictures and films of their relationship which they hid in their basement. Those pictures and reels are shared in the documentary about their lives. 

If you get a chance to watch this documentary, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. For fifty years these women kept their secret because they chose to love someone that was the same sex. Isn't that just the saddest thing that happened to these women and so many more just like them.