With the recent passage of Bill C-389 through the House of Commons, it is now up to the Senate to pass the Bill to ensure that gender identity and gender expression are written into law as protected grouonds against discrimination.

Please find below a link to a website that has made it very easy to e-mail the Senate to let them know that you support the passage of Bill C-389. The website has a backgrounder on what this bill means as well as a template letter and the e-mail addresses for all the Senators.

Take a minute out of your day and write to the Senators to let them know that you support Bill C-389 and they should too!

http://passbillc389.wordpress.com/how-you-can-help/

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the infamous bathhouse raids of February 5, 1981, Queer Ontario Political Action Chair Casey Oraa and Queer Ontario Chairperson Nick Mulé braced the cold yesterday to install the NO MORE SHIT banner with the help of a handful of generous and dedicated observers. Found on Church Street just south of Wellesley, we are hoping this banner becomes a familiar feature leading up to the 30th anniversary of the Gay Freedom Rally on March 6th, the first Pride event to ever take place in the city of Toronto.

Indeed, don’t forget to pass by the banner and wave hello on February 6th and February 20th, which mark the days of the two largest anti-police rallies organized in response to the raids.

The NO MORE SHIT! Remembrance Project

To commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Operation Soap — the infamous bathhouse raids of 1981 that saw the pillaging of four Toronto bathhouses and the charging of 309 men as keepers and found-ins of a common bawdy house — Queer Ontario has printed and pasted a number of posters throughout the City of Toronto to initiate a remembrance process that looks back on the events of February 5th and the community uprising that let the City and the Metro Toronto Police know that enough was ENOUGH!

As part of this process we invite you to share with us your recollections of the 1981 bathhouse raids and the demonstrations that followed shortly after — the demonstrations of February 6th, for example, those of February 20th, or even the Gay Freedom Rally of March 6th, the predecessor to our present-day Pride festivities! Tell us how these actions on the part of the Metro Police and the gay and lesbian community affected your sense of community, your sense of self, and, yes, even your sense of the Police force and the City. How do you feel the events of 1981 have shaped Toronto’s LGBTQ community to this very day?

Feel free to send us an email at info@queerontario.org or share your story with us in our comments section below so they can be archived on the world wide web for easy access by current and future generations.

Let’s work together to keep our stories alive,

The Queer Ontario Political Action Committee