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rfmcdonaldI was pleased to pick up a copy of Outlooks this weekend, if only because that national GLBT monthly was something for me to browse through while I waited out the laggard service at the Living Well. My attention was naturally piqued when I came across, on page 21 of the October issue, the article "First Gay Wedding on PEI."
Simple incompetence, I might have thought once and you might think to, the normal sort of things that just happen to get overlooked in a small insular community. But then, I think of Kent Stetson's 1988 play Warm Wind in China (PDF format), and what Slater's dad says about the Island to Davis.
Davis, incidentally, is the lover of Slater, who is dying of AIDS in Nova Scotia because he moved to that neighbouring province as soon as he could since anything was better than living on PEI, whose father is trying to take Slater's son away from Davis to live at the family homestead in Morell in eastern PEI because surely life in the depths of rural PEI is better than leaving the boy in a house with a fag. Did I mention that Morell is a community that I, travelling east to visit the relatives, passed through on a regular basis before I left the Island?
It is true that, as detailed in this 1997 Egale submission, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was not covered under PEI's human-rights legislation as late as the late 1990s. Once, I might have granted allowances for this. PEI's a small island, small islands often do their own thing with some lag time. But then, compare Iceland, Atlantic Canada's regular indeed overused counterfactual rebuke.
Prince Edward Island, admitted with half of Iceland's population but part of a much larger and rather liberal federal state, fails to have a Pride celebration of remotely comparable size. This is fine, I suppose, since Reykjavik is in the middle of nowhere and Halifax is an easy enough commute for Islanders. What's more, the government of the Province of Prince Edward Island fails to protect people like me against discrimination and even failed to fulfill federal obligations until someone contacted most every official of note. This is interesting.
Now. The only plausible-sounding reason for all these unfortunate gaps that I can imagine would lies in the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, Prince Edward Islanders as a group really don't think that gay rights matter. Perhaps it's outright homophobia--I've no way of telling, since I'm not on the Island and I was thankfully oblivious to such things for almost my entire life. Perhaps it's simply that Islanders think there are other more important things to worry about, like the ongoing decline of traditional family agriculture and the fisheries in specific, the lingering drawn-out death rattle of traditional Prince Edward Island society in general, to bother with such newfangled things as gay rights. But then, I'm reminded of Jim Hornby's Black Islanders (Charlottetown: Institute of Island Studies, 1992) and how he describes Islanders' reactions to people of African descent in the mid-20th century: embarrassment, overpoliteness, "No Vacancy" signs at hotels.
It's funny. Just after I realized my sexual orientation, I thought--or wanted to believe, at least--that although PEI didn't seem to have a handle on gay rights as such, there was enough leeway for a certain amount of tolerance, for an acceptance of variation from the heterosexual norm. I think I'm still right about this--there are highly public personalities like Jim Culbert--but I hadn't quite realized that granting deviants their right to exist wasn't the same sort of thing as accepting them as normals and as equals. My mistake.
Zarow and Majeau were visiting P.E.I. for a family reunion and wanted to get married then. But they were told they could not get a marriage licence. The issue went before cabinet on the Tuesday. The couple was told they might be able to get a licence following that cabinet meeting but that didn’t happen either.
Frustrated, Zarow and Majeau left for Nova Scotia Wednesday to get married over there. Licences have been handed out in that province for months. But before leaving P.E.I., they stopped into Vital Statistics in Montague and while there, they filled out an application for a marriage licence anyway.
From Nova Scotia, Zarow decided to make one last attempt to have her dream of being married in P.E.I. fulfilled. She called the Premier’s Office,Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Health, which oversees Vital Statistics,Thursday morning. “I told the Premier’s office that I had been in to apply for a marriage licence and other couples were given their marriage licences and I was not,” Zarow said. “They walked away happy and I didn’t.”
The California couple was resigned to getting married in Nova Scotia. But late Thursday afternoon, Zarow said she got the word she was waiting to hear. Health Minister Chester Gillan had approved the necessary changes and the marriage licence was waiting for them. Zarow and Majeau took the ferry back to P.E.I. Friday morning, staff from Vital Statistics agreed to come into the office on the holiday, Gold Cup Day, to give them their licence, and friends scrambled to get the ceremony ready for Friday afternoon. Zarow said she is pleased she’s made it easier for other gays and lesbians to marry in P.E.I. “From now on any couple can walk into the Vital Statistics office and simply fill out the paperwork as simply as anyone else,” said Zarow. “No one else will have to fight this battle.”
Simple incompetence, I might have thought once and you might think to, the normal sort of things that just happen to get overlooked in a small insular community. But then, I think of Kent Stetson's 1988 play Warm Wind in China (PDF format), and what Slater's dad says about the Island to Davis.
There's no place like the Island. We get a breeze at night of course. Like the fella says, there's always a breeze on the Island. Yeah. You can't beat the Island for sleeping. Some people might think it's too slow but one good thing is nothing much goes wrong on the Island (43).
Davis, incidentally, is the lover of Slater, who is dying of AIDS in Nova Scotia because he moved to that neighbouring province as soon as he could since anything was better than living on PEI, whose father is trying to take Slater's son away from Davis to live at the family homestead in Morell in eastern PEI because surely life in the depths of rural PEI is better than leaving the boy in a house with a fag. Did I mention that Morell is a community that I, travelling east to visit the relatives, passed through on a regular basis before I left the Island?
It is true that, as detailed in this 1997 Egale submission, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was not covered under PEI's human-rights legislation as late as the late 1990s. Once, I might have granted allowances for this. PEI's a small island, small islands often do their own thing with some lag time. But then, compare Iceland, Atlantic Canada's regular indeed overused counterfactual rebuke.
The gay movement began later than most in this small nation of 280,000 inhabitants. Iceland’s national gay right organization, Samtokin 78 was formed in 1978, and has worked tirelessly ever since. Ironically, it was the AIDS epidemic that propelled the issue of gay rights to the center of public attention and debate. By the mid 1980s, the disease could no longer be ignored in Iceland. In order to mount an effective campaign to educate people about AIDS, this country of conservative Evangelical Lutherans had to talk openly about sex. Or, in the words of Iceland’s queer pop icon Pall Oskar, "they had to start talking not just about their own sex, but about other peoples’ sex."
The result of this open public discussion was a sweeping change in both social policy and law that has placed the Iceland gay and lesbian community among the most emancipated in the world. Gay marriage is a legal fact of life, and gay folk live side by side with straights in quiet harmony. There remain pockets of anti-gay conservatism, especially out in the sparsely populated rural villages. And there are issues still to resolve. But the fact remains, this country has seen one of the swiftest societal attitude adjustments in the world.
In 1999, a group of 1500 attended Iceland’s first pride celebration. Last year, between 25 and 30 thousand people showed up to participate or to watch. That’s a solid 10 percent of the nation’s population! As news of the Reykjavik gay community has slowly seeped into international queer consciousness, this annual celebration has attracted a growing number of visitors from both Europe and the U.S. Hotels are booked months in advance for the festivities, and visitors often remain for a few days to sample some of the rugged nature and adventure that Iceland has to offer.
Prince Edward Island, admitted with half of Iceland's population but part of a much larger and rather liberal federal state, fails to have a Pride celebration of remotely comparable size. This is fine, I suppose, since Reykjavik is in the middle of nowhere and Halifax is an easy enough commute for Islanders. What's more, the government of the Province of Prince Edward Island fails to protect people like me against discrimination and even failed to fulfill federal obligations until someone contacted most every official of note. This is interesting.
Now. The only plausible-sounding reason for all these unfortunate gaps that I can imagine would lies in the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, Prince Edward Islanders as a group really don't think that gay rights matter. Perhaps it's outright homophobia--I've no way of telling, since I'm not on the Island and I was thankfully oblivious to such things for almost my entire life. Perhaps it's simply that Islanders think there are other more important things to worry about, like the ongoing decline of traditional family agriculture and the fisheries in specific, the lingering drawn-out death rattle of traditional Prince Edward Island society in general, to bother with such newfangled things as gay rights. But then, I'm reminded of Jim Hornby's Black Islanders (Charlottetown: Institute of Island Studies, 1992) and how he describes Islanders' reactions to people of African descent in the mid-20th century: embarrassment, overpoliteness, "No Vacancy" signs at hotels.
It's funny. Just after I realized my sexual orientation, I thought--or wanted to believe, at least--that although PEI didn't seem to have a handle on gay rights as such, there was enough leeway for a certain amount of tolerance, for an acceptance of variation from the heterosexual norm. I think I'm still right about this--there are highly public personalities like Jim Culbert--but I hadn't quite realized that granting deviants their right to exist wasn't the same sort of thing as accepting them as normals and as equals. My mistake.
