A couple of months ago, I saw a short documentary feature called Badge of Pride, which portrayed that stuggles and hopes of openly gay cops in the Toronto Police Service. At just under forty-five minutes of runtime, Badge of Pride is a tad too slight and relies heavily on the anecdotes of the interviewed officers, but Min Sook Lee's film does bring some important issues to light, and raises the question of how accepting of the LGBT community society actually is.
Naturally, society has come a long way is the past several decades, certainly when compared to the 1980s. What is now Pride Week in Toronto was originally conceived as a protest against the 1981 police raids on Toronto's gay bathhouses, during which over 300 men were arrested (Badge). Meanwhile, according to Michael R. Stevenson, a 1987 study of U.S. college freshmen found that "62.5% of men and 44.6% of women agreed that homosexual relations should be forbidden" (500).
Over time, tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals have increased, although problems still remain. Jeni Loftus reports that between 1973 and 1998, while hostility to the LGBT community declined, every year a majority of Americans said that homosexuality was "always wrong" (767). Keep in mind that it was not until 2003 that the Supreme Court of the United States, in the decision Lawrence v. Texas, struck down anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional.
The same year that anti-sodomy laws were struck down in the United States, the case Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada legalized same-sex marriage in the province of Ontario. Two years later, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Toronto's Pride Week, the chief of Toronto's police took part in the proceedings. Badge of Pride, which began filming in 2006, uses the apparent progressive swing as background for the film, and asks whether things have changed as much as we may think.
Badge of Pride follows four members of the Toronto Police Service: three constables (Jackie O'Keefe, Paul Regan, and Todd Hillhouse, the latter of whom was promoted to sergeant during filming) and a detective (Judy Nosworthy). These four discuss their impressions of the workplace environment and what it means to be an out-of-closet member of the police force. Sometimes the experience is positive, and other times their treatment is worrisome.
The question of whether the Toronto police is accepting of the LBGT community is best demonstrated in the contrast between Regan and O'Keefe's impressions. Regan, who the filmmakers report as the most prominent openly gay cop in Toronto, reports having almost no problems from his coworkers or his superiors. Though he does say that some of his partners are uncomfortable hearing about his sex life, Regan tends to be optimistic about his position and that state of gay cops in general.
O'Keefe, however, explicitly states that Regan's optimism is misplaced and believes that he will eventually come up against internal discrimination and harrassment. O'Keefe speaks from her own experience; she mentions receiving threatening messages from a senior officer regarding her being a proudly open lesbian: "You have to remember who signs your checks," she recalls hearing, "and you have to remember who puts a roof over your head."
Sadly, the stories of the other two cops tends to support O'Keefe's side of the argument. The harrassment from his comrades that Hillhouse faced was beyond absurd, up to and including his harrassers spying on his house from their squad car on the side of the road. Nosworthy, meanwhile, compares the environment of the police department to that of a high school, with homophobic slurs thrown about on a regular basis.
It also appears that the strain of homophobia within the Toronto Police Service extends past individual officers and into the LGBT community as a whole. After all, it wasn't until the year before Lee began filming that the police participated in Pride Week. Gay-friendly heterosexual officers also appear reluctant to show their support, for fear of repercussions. This is especially evident at Nosworthy's wedding--several of her coworkers attended, but none of them wished to appear on camera.
This makes O'Keefe's skepticism of Regan's outlook understandable, for certain, and Regan's camera presence--rarely looking directly at the camera or interviewer--suggests a reticence to talk. However, it could also be that O'Keefe and Regan's viewpoints are influenced by their level of involvement in gay-related politics. Lee describes O'Keefe as having been a "radical lesbian feminist" before joining the force, while Regan mentions thatthe whole Toronto pride scene just wasn't for him.
How much of the arguments presented in the film hold up today is unclear. Badge of Pride was first screened in 2009, and must have wrapped up production well before then. Several years have passed, and while, assuming past trends have not significantly altered, the Toronto of 2012 would be more accepting of gay cops than the Toronto of 2009. But in the grand scheme of things, three years is not that long. However one slices it, there is still a long way to go.
Works cited:
Badge of Pride. Dir. Min Sook Lee. PBS. WNET, New York, 27 June 2012.
Television.
Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada. 60 O.R. 321. Court of Appeal for Ontario.
2003. Ontario Courts. Judges' Library, n.d. Web. 28 June 2012.
Lawrence v. Texas. 539 U.S. 558. Supreme Court of the US. 2003. Supreme Court.
Legal Information Inst., Cornell U Law School, n.d. Web. 28 June 2012.
Loftus, Jeni. "America's Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 to
1998." American Sociological Review 66.5 (2001): 762-82. JSTOR. Web. 28 June
2012.
Stevenson, Michael R. "Promoting Tolerance for Homosexuality: An Evaluation of
Intervention Strategies." The Journal of Sex Research 25.4 (1988): 500-11.
JSTOR. Web. 28 June 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment