rfmcdonald | [URBAN NOTE] "Toronto Police Apology for Bathhouse Raids is Too Little, Too Late" (Reply)

I agree with Michael Lyons' Torontoist article. (The apology would have been more meaningful if it was not 35 years late.)

When you need a good photo-op, some palatable sound bites, and a little bit of cheap social currency, apologize to the gay community.

Apologizing to the gays is the hottest look this season. Wrapping your institution in a rainbow flag is in. You’ll look progressive, and it’ll help you slim down some of the more contentious aspects of your institution’s systemic problems.

Following hot on the heels of the smiling, sunny Trudeau Liberal government’s apology for a decades-old case of a man who was deemed a sex offender for consensual gay sex—the same government, let it not be forgotten, who has turned Canada into the second biggest arms exporter to the Middle East, including a $15-billion sale to the anti-gay, anti-women, anti-human rights regime of Saudi Arabia—Toronto Police Services are now apologizing for two bathhouse raids.

The apology, which will consider both the 1981 gay bathhouse raids and the 2000 Pussy Palace raids, will force TPS to confront the unfortunate reality that officers treated LGBTQ communities with malice and disrespect only some 16 years ago. In the ’81 raid, men wearing nothing but towels were forced out in humiliation by 200 police officers, threatened for their sexualities. Cops went well above the line of duty, abusing and terrorizing patrons. (One officer in the bathhouse showers infamously said, “I wish these pipes were hooked up to gas so I could annihilate you all.”) Nineteen years later, male officers stormed an all-female event under the guise of a liquor inspection. Female patrons were harassed and intimidated, leaving nude and semi-naked women forced to cover up and leave in fear.

Yes, LGBTQ Torontonians deserve an apology. But TPS’s move today feels more like PR than a genuine “sorry.”