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From Subversion to Liberation: Homosexuals and the Immigration Act 1952–1977
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2014
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Historians of the Cold War have tended to focus on the repression of political dissidents during that period, but only recently has attention been shifted to the simultaneous suppression of other types of non-conformity, such as sexual variance and non-traditional gender roles. Parallel to the repression of internal political dissent which accompanied the international Cold War, another, more subtle, campaign was proceeding. This was the attempt to re-establish the social order, based on family life and traditional sex roles, which the war had tended to undermine.
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- Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 2 , 1987 , pp. 1 - 27
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- Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1987
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Notes
* The author would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Human Rights Law Fund of the federal Department of Justice, and to thank Peter Swan for his excellent research assistance and Reg Whitaker and James Phillips for their valuable comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Jurisprudence Centre at Carleton University on March 14, 1986.
1. On the attempt to provide traditional work opportunities for Canadian women displaced by postwar demobilization, see Pierson, Ruth, “‘Home Aide’: A Solution to Women's Unemployment After World War II,” Atlantis 2, no. 2, Part 2 (Spring 1977), 85Google Scholar; see also her “Women's Emancipation and the Recruitment of Women Into the Labour Force in World War II,” in Trofimenkoff, S. and Prentice, A. (eds.), The Neglected Majority (1977)Google Scholar, for a summary of postwar governmental actions aimed at restoring women to their traditional roles in the home or in “appropriate” occupations such as service or clerical work. On the repression of sexual variance in the postwar years, see D'Emilio, John, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940-1970 (Chicago: University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, and Kinsman, Gary, The Regulation of Desire in Canada (Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1987)Google Scholar. For an account of changing attitudes to love and sex roles during the war, see Costello, John, Love, Sex and War: Changing Values 1939-45 (1985)Google Scholar.
2. While this phenomenon was certainly assisted and initiated to some extent by governmental action (see note 1), the role of business and the advertising industry have attracted the major share of attention in the existing literature: see, eg., Atwan, R. et al. , Edsels, Luckies and Frigidaires: Advertising the American Way (1979)Google Scholar; Ewen, S., Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of Consumer Society (1976)Google Scholar; Robinson, G.J., “The Media and Social Change: Thirty Years of Magazine Coverage of Women and Work (1950-1977),” Atlantis 8, no. 2 (Spring 1983), 87Google Scholar.
3. For the U.S., see The Nation 237, August 20, 1983, 148Google Scholar. See also, Montreal Gazette, February 23, 1985, 44Google Scholar.
4. D'Emilio, , Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 23–39Google Scholar.
5. Some members of the Wolfenden Committee (appointed in 1954) gained “a definite impression, derived from what we have observed or read, and by inference from the tenor of evidence submitted to us, that there has been an increase in the amount of homosexual behaviour”: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, Cmnd. 47 (London, 1957)Google Scholar, para. 44. Others thought that the evidence was not conclusive. Those that thought there had been an increase in homosexual behaviour attributed it in part to “the conditions of war time [which], with broken families and prolonged separation of the sexes, may well have occasioned homosexual behaviour which in some cases has been carried over into peace time.” Ibid., para. 45: Although the members of the Committee looked upon the war as a negative reason for increased homosexual behaviour (forcing people into same-sex sexual contact, faute de mieux) rather than a positive one (providing an opportunity for the homosexually inclined to meet others of similar proclivities), what is of interest for my purposes is the association made by contemporaries between the war and an increase in homosexual behaviour (and visibility?).
6. By “semi-public,” I do not mean “openly gay” in the sense in which that term is used today. I mean simply an identity which arose out of social interaction in a nondomestic setting. The bars themselves may have been “private” clubs and their existence unknown (initially at any rate) to the non-gay population, but they nevertheless became crucibles for the formation of a public identity in the sense I have indicated.
7. Kinsman, , The Regulation of Desire, 116–120Google Scholar. The manuscript of this work was generously made availabe to me by the author.
8. Hereafter, SBHM. Dr. Alfred Kinsey was an entomologist whose reputation for meticulous study and scholarship was built on two massive studies of the gall wasp: The Gall Wasp Genus Cynips: A Study in the Origin of Species (1930) and The Origin of High Categories in Cynips (1936). He was also the author of Edible Wild Plants of North America (1943).
9. Hereafter, SBHF.
10. SBHM: Canadian Forum 28 (1948), 44Google Scholar; Canadian Welfare 24 (1948), 40Google Scholar; Food for Thought 9 (1949), 45Google Scholar; Saturday Night 63 (1948), 12Google Scholar; Canadian Doctor July 1948; Canadian Journal of Public Health 39 (1948), 170Google Scholar; SBHF: Canadian Forum 33 (1954), 234Google Scholar; Saturday Night 68 (1953), 7Google Scholar. Saturday Night 65 (1950), 10Google Scholar, also published an article in 1950 discussing Kinsey's second projected volume, which refers to attempts by a group called the Health League of Canada to suppress the distribution of SBHM in this country.
11. Interestingly enough,it was the book on female sexual behaviour which gave rise to more invective and controversy in the U.S. than the male volume: New York Congressman Louis B. Heller publicly advocated the banning of SBHF from the mails until Congress could investigate it, saying of Kinsey that “[h]e is hurling the insult of the century against our mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters under the pretext of making a great contribution to scientific research”: Christenson, Cornelia V., Kinsey, a Biography (1971), 163Google Scholar. Kinsey's research was based on interviews involving over 12,000 white American and Canadian men and women: SBHM, 76, 81. He conducted 7985 of these personally, with the rest conducted by assistants: Christenson, 199. He found that 50% of all males interviewed admitted erotic responses to other males and that 37% across all occupational groups admitted at least one homosexual experience to the point of orgasm between adolescence and old age. Four percent of men were found to be exclusively homosexual throughout their lives, and 13% had been involved in more homosexual than heterosexual activity for at least three consecutive years of their lives: SBHM, 650-651. Among women, 28% said they responded erotically to their own sex, 13% had experienced orgasm with other women, and the numbers of women involved exclusively with other women amounted to between one third and one half of the equivalent figure for men: SBHF, 474-476. Kinsey estimated that 95% of white American males had violated the law in some way at least once along the way to an orgasm: SBHM, 392. He stated that “[p]ersons with homosexual histories are to be found in every age group, in every social level, in every conceivable occupation, in cities and on farms, and in the most remote areas in the country”: SBHM, 627. Dr. Kinsey was accused of aiding Communism and his work was singled out by a Congressional committee in 1954 as an example of scientific research which produced “extremely grave” social effects: Christenson, 165-166. The Rockefeller Foundation withdrew its financial support for his Institute for Sex Research in 1954 as a result of political pressure: Ibid, 163-164.
12. D'Emilio, , Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 41Google Scholar.
13. U.S. Senate, 81st Congress, 2d session, Doc. No. 241, Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government (Washington: 1950), 4Google Scholar.
14. Ibid.
15. D'Emilio, , Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 50–51Google Scholar.
16. The Globe and Mail, February 28, 1950, carried a story on p. 1 by New York Times columnist James Reston which stated that a review of all atomic energy security procedures was underway as a result of the arrest of Dr. Fuchs. The last agreement covering the exchange of nuclear information among the three countries had expired on January 1, 1950, and before a new one was presented to Congress for ratification, Washington declared that it was going to insist on tighter security.
17. Hodges, Andrew, Alan Turing: The Enigma (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 508Google Scholar.
18. Report of the Royal Commission appointed … to investigate the facts relating to and the circumstances surrounding the communication, by public officials and other persons in positions of trust of secret and confidential information to agents of a foreign power (Ottawa, 1946), 689Google Scholar.
19. Whitaker, Reginald, “Origins of the Canadian Government's Internal Security System, 1946-52,” Canadian Historical Review 65 (1984), 157–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar. What follows in this and the next paragraph is based largely on Whitaker's account.
20. Whitaker, ibid, 180, quotes from a letter written by Brooke Claxton, the Minister of National Defence, to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1955: “In Parliament the Cabinet simply refused to make available information or papers. A matter of this kind never got before the Parliamentary Committee. … As a matter of fact we had very little trouble.”
21. Lesbians, too, fell under suspicion and were interrogated by the RCMP: John Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1980), 126Google Scholar.
22. See, “RCMP files not destroyed as promised, Kaplan says,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 14, 1982, 9Google Scholar. The files in question had come to light during the McDonald Commission inquiry into RCMP activities, and contained records on union officials, native Indians and visitors to Soviet bloc countries as well as homosexuals: see McDonald Commission, 2d Report, vol. 1, 518; vol. 2, 794-795. The Commission said that “[s]uch information collection programmes are far too indiscriminate and should never have been established”; it recommended that “[t]he existing files on homosexuals that are not relevant to security [i.e., in the narrow sense advocated by the Commission] should be destroyed.”
In the U.S., the FBI routinely opened files on homosexuals and kept them under surveillance from the 1950s at least until the mid-1970s: “FBI spied on U.S.- homosexuals,” Toronto Globe and Mail, September 9, 1982, 24Google Scholar (FBI and Pentagon documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act).
23. Sawatsky, , Men in the Shadows, 132Google Scholar.
24. Ibid., 126.
25. Ibid.
26. Whitaker, , “Origins of the Canadian Government's Internal Security System,” 169Google Scholar.
27. For the U.S., see The Nation 237, August 20, 1983, 148Google Scholar (review of D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities). Reg Whitaker, currently co-authoring a book on the Cold War in Canada with Gary Marcuse, has indicated to me that his research confirms this assertion. See also, Montreal Gazette, February 23, 1985, 44Google Scholar. “Civil service homosexuals fired as ‘security risks’,” (documents obtained under Access to Information Act showing two thirds of over 150 civil servants fired as security risks 1956-1963 because of ‘character weaknesses’ such as homosexuality). Ironically, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald carried a contemporary echo of the Gazette's story later in the week: “‘Hard core’ lesbians fired from CFS Shelburne,” February 28, 1985, 1.
28. On the recall and resignation of David Johnson, Canada's ambassador to Moscow 1956-1960, see Sawatsky, John, For Services Rendered (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1982), 172–174Google Scholar. His predecessor, John Watkins, died of a heart attack in Montreal on October 12, 1964, after being questioned by the RCMP: see “Envoy's death natural: coroner,” Toronto Globe and Mail, June 24, 1982, 9Google Scholar; Sawatsky, , For Services Rendered, 174–183Google Scholar.
29. Sawatsky, , For Services Rendered, 124Google Scholar.
30. Whitaker, , “Origins of the Canadian Government's Internal Security System,” 162Google Scholar.
31. Ibid., 182.
32. On the evolution of the concept of “homosexual” as the distinguishing trait of a particular type of person as opposed to the description of a discrete act into which anyone might be tempted, see the essays in Plummer, K., (ed.), The Making of the Modern Homosexual (London: Hutchinson, 1981)Google Scholar.
33. Evidence from a later date indicates that the U.S. specifically pressured its allies to “weed out homosexuals—as hopeless security risks—from important Government jobs” (see note 16): Sydney (Australia)Google ScholarMorning Telegraph, October 25, 1953, quoted in Wildeblood, Peter, Against the Law (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1959), 45–46Google Scholar. The article stated that a top-ranking Scotland Yard official had “recently spent three months in America consulting with FBI officials in putting the finishing touches to the plan.”
34. Canada repealed its Chinese Immigration Act in 1947, S.C. 1947, c. 19, s. 4Google Scholar but Chinese immigration was still regulated by Order-in-Council (P.C. 2115) and subject to severe quota restrictions: see Hawkins, Freda, Canada and Immigration, Public Policy and Public Concern (1972), 89–91Google Scholar; agreements were reached in 1951 allowing 150 Indians, 100 Pakistanis and 50 Ceylonese to be admitted to Canada annually, quotas which lasted until 1962: Ibid., 99. For the American efforts, see Hutchinson, E.P., Legislative History of American Immigration Policy 1798-1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 273–297CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35. The McCarran-Walter Act incorporated the provisions of the Internal Security Act of 1950 dealing with the deportation of aliens holding subversive views. For Canada, compare the definition of subversives in the 1952 Act and the pre-existing legislation. For obvious geographic reasons, any serious attempt by the U.S. to screen out undesirables of any kind cannot succeed unless Canada also agrees to screen out the same types of undesirables. In August 1951 Sen. Patrick McCarran, a sponsor of the Immigration and Nationality Act which would soon pass through Congress, alleged that “possibly 5,000,000 aliens” had entered the U.S. illegally, creating a situation “potentially more dangerous than an armed invasion.” Sen. Hubert O'Conor added that Ontario and Cuba were being used as assembly points, a statement which “brought expressions of surprise from Canadian officials”: New York Times, August 21, 1951, 11Google Scholar. The charge was undoubtedly groundless, but the incident illustrates contemporary American anxiety over the trustworthiness of Canada's immigration system.
36. At least since the Immigration Act, 1910, S.C. 1910, c. 27, s. 3(d)Google Scholar.
37. There are two Immigration Acts in the Revised Statutes of Canada 1952. The first, c. 145, reproduced the Immigration Act, S.C. 1910, c. 27Google Scholar, as amended. It was repealed by the new Immigration Act passed in June 1952, and added to the Revised Statutes, for the sake of convenience, presumably, as c. 325.
38. The day after the Act was passed the General Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association wrote to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to complain about the “extraordinary difficulty that even competent specialists in the field of psychiatry have in diagnosing ‘constitutional psychopathic personality’.” Public Archives of Canada (hereafter PAC), Records relating to Immigration, RG 76, vol. 812, file 551-2, part 1, J.D.M. Griffin to W.E. Harris, June 24, 1952.
For the difficulties experienced under the similar American provision, see Note, “Limitations on Congressional power to deport resident aliens excludable as psychopaths at time of entry,” Yale Law Journal 68 (1959), 931CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39. PAC, RG 26, Records of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, vol. 97, file 3-15-1, part 1, memo from Hugh Keenleyside, Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources, October 28, 1948. Prior to the creation of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in 1950, immigration matters fell under the aegis of the Ministry of Mines and Resources.
40. Ibid., Laval Fortier to A.L. Jolliffe, September 9, 1950.
41. PAC, RG 26, vol. 97, file 3-15-1, part 3, minutes of meeting to discuss first draft of new Immigration Act, December 20, 1950. Unfortunately only the Committee's conclusions are recorded in this document; summaries of the discussions do not seem to be available.
42. The Act obliged these officials to report on all members of the prohibited classes who might be found within their jurisdiction, not just on homosexuals. Once the report was received, a Special Inquiry Officer might be appointed to decide whether the person in question was in fact within the prohibited classes, in which case deportation would normally ensue under s. 19(2).
43. Eayrs, James, in his Peacekeeping and Deterrence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), vol. 3Google Scholar of the In Defence of Canada series, states that his “influence … justifiably became one of the legends of the capital,” 30.
44. PAC, RG 26, vol. 98, file 3-15-1, part 3, “RGR” to Laval Fortier, March 24, 1952, memo attached to draft bill. Robertson was not the only one to query the explicit reference to homosexuals. In response to a letter from the Director of Immigration soliciting his reaction to a copy of the draft bill, O. Cormier, Officer in Charge in Paris, wrote:
After my 33 years' record in the Service, I do not think that I risk endangering my standing by referring to the innovation of naming homosexuals in the Act. From what I heard of recently published well-intentioned reports on the subject of homo- and heterosexualism, there might be some intricacies, especially for an examining officer, in defining or determining an offence of a person of either sex.
PAC, RG 76, Accession 83-84/346, Box 1, file 5000-14-2, O. Cormier to C.E.S. Smith, May 28, 1952.
45. Granatstein, J.L., A Man of Influence (Ottawa: Dereau Publishers, 1981), 272–273Google Scholar. Irving Abella and Troper, Harold in None is Too Many (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982)Google Scholar, suggest that Robertson attempted to persuade immigration officials to adopt a more humanitarian attitude toward Jewish immigration during the war, although the evidence is somewhat ambiguous: see 46, 122, 125, 132.
46. PAC, RG 26, vol. 98, file 3-15-1, part 2, various versions of draft act with attachments.
47. Whitaker, , “Origins of the Canadian Government's Internal Security System,” 19Google Scholar; Granatstein, , A Man of Influence, 274–276Google Scholar.
48. The terms “liberal” and “humanistic” are obviously used in a relative sense. On some issues, notably the immigration of Jewish refugees during the war, these officials were neither liberal nor humanistic; see Abella and Troper, one is Too Many, n. 45.
49. U.S. Senate, Employment of Homosexuals.
50. New York Times, December 16, 1950, 3Google Scholar.
51. U.S. Senate, Employment of Homosexuals, 8–9Google Scholar.
52. There is clear evidence that the Canadian Government capitulated to demands by the RCMP and the DND, who in turn were pressured by the U.S., to purge Canadian agencies of suspected subversive elements. The best example of this is the case of the National Film Board, where a “red scare” in 1950-52 provoked the Security Panel to make all NFB employees subject to file check, even though other government employees were checked only if they had access to secret material: Whitaker, , “Origins of the Canadian Government's Internal Security System,” 171–173Google Scholar.
The action was precipitated by the statement of a U.S. military representative that DND's American connections “might be seriously prejudiced by lack of confidence in the NFB”: Ibid., 173. The U.S. also put pressure on Canada to set up a security clearance system for merchant seamen on the Great Lakes, which it did, in spite of many misgivings, in 1951: Ibid., 170-171. Once homosexuals had been tarred with the “security risk” brush in the U.S., one would expect to see the RCMP championing all possible measures to control “the problem” on the domestic front.
53. House of Commons, Debates, 6th Sess., 21st Parliament, 2800, 2814Google Scholar.
54. Ibid., 3075-3079.
55. House of Commons, Special Committee appointed to consider Bill no. 305, An Act Respecting Immigration, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (Ottawa, 1952)Google Scholar.
56. Ibid., 36-39.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., 40-43.
59. Ibid., 44.
60. Ibid., 40. The Act did indeed give the Minister a “free hand” in immigration matters, vesting in him total authority over all admissions and deportations. But he probably came to rue the day that the Act was passed, as he and subsequent ministers became trapped by the “mountains of cases” which piled up on their desks for individual decision, virtually paralysing the Department: Hawkins, , Canada and Immigration, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972), 101–106Google Scholar.
61. Ibid., 44.
62. House of Commons, Debates, 6th Sess., 21st Parliament, 3587–3592.
63. A reference to “homosexuals and other sex perverts” in the new Act had initially been recommended by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in its report “The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States”: S. Rep. No. 1515, 81st Congress, 2d Sess. (Washington, 1950)Google Scholar. Upon the advice of the Public Health Service, however, the specific label was dropped in favour of a general ban on persons having a “psychopathic personality,” on the theory that a diagnosis of homosexuality might be too hard to substantiate. The legislative history is reviewed in Boutilier v. INS, 387 U.S. 118, 121–122 (1967), in which the Supreme Court affirmed that the phrase “psychopathic personality” did include homosexuals, and further, that it was not void for vagueness.
64. Granatstein, , A Man of Influence, 273–275Google Scholar.
65. Sawatsky, , Men in the Shadows, 129–130Google Scholar.
66. Homosexuals might also be deported under s. 19(1)(e)(ii) (conviction for a Criminal Code offence); 19(1)(e)(iv) (discovered to have been a member of a prohibited class at time of admission); or 19(1)(e)(v) (having become, since entering Canada, a member of a prohibited class).
67. Recent research by Reg Whitaker has revealed this to be the case. He has informed the author that a 1949 set of criteria for security rejection of prospective immigrants, agreed upon by the Immigration Branch and the RCMP, did not include homosexuals, although it did include groups not specifically mentioned in the Immigration Act, such as “professional gamblers” and “suspected criminals.” A later list, compiled after the passing of the 1952 Act, does include “homosexuals” (Security Panel Document No. 198, April 8, 1959): Communication to the author, July 25, 1985. This evidence strongly suggests that prior to 1950 there was little or no domestic concern over excluding homosexuals, even among the RCMP. For the RCMP's role in postwar immigration screening, see generally McDonald Commission, 2d Report, vol. 2, 813-815.
68. Sherwood Atkinson (Sheri de Cartier) v. MMI (1972), 5Google Scholar Immigration Appeal Cases 185.
69. PAC, RG 76, vol. 812, file 551-2, part 3, L.A. Couture to D.M. Sloan, March 6, 1956.
70. Section 21 obliged a person referred to in s. 19 to undergo a mental or physical examination or both by a medical officer “[w]here so required under the regulations.” There may have been a gap in the regulations where homosexuals were concerned, but it should have been an easy one to fill if anyone had cared to pursue the matter. No action seems to have been taken to amend the regulations.
71. The Immigration Appeal Board eventually decided that one act of a homosexual nature was sufficient: Immigration Appeal Cases 185—Sherwood Atkinson Sheri.
72. PAC, RG 26, vol.22, “Deportation Statistics 1946-1963.” The monthly statistics from 1953-1957 do not contain sufficient disaggregation to answer the question of how many homosexuals were deported during these years. The headings used are simply “criminality,” “mental and physical defect,” and “other.”
73. Ibid.
74. Canada, Department of Manpower and Immigration, White Paper, Canadian Immigration Policy (Ottawa, 1966)Google Scholar.
75. It is true that the White Paper mentions exclusion on “subversive grounds,” but if the reference is to homosexuals it presumably means that those homosexuals who are subversives (i.e., advocate the violent overthrow of established authority) could be excluded on that ground. Although the passage is ambiguous, it does not seem to assume that all homosexuals are subversives.
76. PAC, RG 76, Accession 83-84/346, Box 4, file 5400-6-5, Director of Immigration, Ontario Region to Assistant Director General, Facilitation, Enforcement and Control, September 17, 1975.
77. Ibid., internal memo from Assistant Director General, Facilitation, Enforcement and Control, November 20, 1975.
78. House of Commons, Debates, 2d sess., 30th Parliament, 7488. The Act came into force on April 10, 1978 (see SI/78-70).
79. The first gay demonstration on Parliament Hill took place on August 28, 1971: The Body Politic, no. 76, (September 1981), 15Google Scholar.
80. There was no gay group as such from Prince Edward Island, but the PEI Civil Liberties Association urged that the new Act not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation: Special Joint Committee on the Senate and of the House of Commons on Immigration Policy, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, no. 46, 65.
81. Ibid., no. 42, 35.
82. Ibid., no. 38.
83. Ibid., no. 32, 40.
85. Special Joint Committee of the Senate and of the House of Commons on Immigration Policy, Report to Parliament (Ottawa, 1975), 36Google Scholar.
86. This occurred most recently during the hearings before the Parliamentary Committee on Equality Rights: see its Report (October 1985), 30–32Google Scholar.
87. Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 302 F. 2d 652 (9th Cir., 1962). The Supreme Court dealt with the case on other grounds and did not reach the question of constitutionality: 374 U.S. 449 (1963).
88. See Harper, Elizabeth J., (ed.), Immigration Laws of the United States (Indianapolis and New York, 1975), 376–377Google Scholar. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled, on a case arising before the amendment, that the term “psychopathic personality” did include homosexuals and was not unconstitutional: Boutilier v. INS, 387 U.S. 118 (1967).
89. Privacy arguments were rejected in Doe v. Commonwealth Attorney, 425 U.S. 901 (1976), summarily affirming 403 F. Supp. 1199; equality arguments in Dronenburg v. Zech, 741 F. 2d 1388 (1984), (U.S. C.A., D.C. Cir.). On the latter, see Dworkin, Ronald, “Reagan's Justice,” New York Review of Books 31, no. 17, November 8, 1984Google Scholar. Public discussion and advocacy of homosexual issues have been routinely protected under the 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech, however: Gay Student Services v. Texas A & M University, 737 F. 2d 1217 (1984), (U.S. C.A., 5th Circ.) contains a review of the case law on the topic.
90. Dronenburg v. Zech is one of the most recent and authoritative decisions. One of the few successful cases involved a lesbian member of the army reserves who was discharged simply for evidence of homosexual “tendencies,” without any particular sexual acts being alleged: ben Shalom v. Secretary of Army, 489 F. Supp. 964 (1980), (U.S. D.C., E.D. Wisc.). The army action was found to violate the 1st Amendment and the constitutional right to privacy. It seems clear proof of even one sexual act would have led to a different result.
91. Parliamentary Committee on Equality Rights, Report, 30–32Google Scholar.
92. Blackburn, C.E., “Human Rights in an International Context: Recognizing the Right of Intimate Association,” Ohio State Law Journal 43 (1982), 143Google Scholar (27 states and the District of Columbia as of 1982).
The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the power of states to criminalize consensual private homosexual conduct, rejecting a constitutional challenge to the Georgia sodomy statute: Bowers v. Hardwick 106 S. Ct. 2841 (1986).
93. S.C. 1968-69, c. 38, s. 7.
94. Re Vancouver Sun and GATE (1977), 77 D.L.R. (3d) 487, 495. Seaton, J.A. disagreed, saying “policies behind federal statutes governing immigration are not indicative of the policies exemplified in provincial human rights legislation”: Ibid., 503. Branca, J.A.'s observation came on the very eve of the repeal of the provision in question.
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