| "There’s not much glamour in being an activist," says Stephen Lock, voted most active activist for a third time in Fast Forward’s annual Best of Calgary poll.
Much of his work in forwarding non-heterosexual community causes is done in countless hours of strategy meetings, committee discussions, bargaining sessions with cabinet ministers and lengthy telephone Q&A sessions with reporters when gay issues hit the media. Then there’s the "you-don’t-speak-for-me" mark that Lock jokes he’s developed just under his left collarbone. Socializing can turn into heated debate as those for whom he’s an advocate poke his shoulder and scold his stance.
After many years of dogged political activism, he wears his battle scars well. Taking criticism in stride and enjoying the work, he’s been pushing the issues since he came out in 1979 shortly after graduating from Mount Royal College’s journalism program. He then became involved with Gay Information Resources Calgary, a peer counselling and information phone line. Eagerly taking to the organization’s political work, Lock has been fighting the good fight ever since.
Though he is careful not to use it as a personal platform, Lock assumed the host spot of CJSW Campus Community Radio’s les/bi/gay forum Speak Sebastian in 1992. "I never met a microphone I didn’t like," says the gregarious talker. With an up-to-the-minute grip on the issues, he’s also demonstrated a nose for compelling stories. One of his favourite interviews was with a Calgarian who was a former model for and lover of gay cult erotic artist Tom of Finland. The latter’s art is best described as blue-collar workers on pink-testosterone mega-overdose. Lock has also tracked down and interviewed via satellite phone the emperor of the first gay country — the Gay & Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands. He is also an online columnist for gaycalgary.com, a forum that allows him somewhat more editorial leeway than the strictly journalistic approach he takes to hosting Speak Sebastian.
Since 2002, much of Lock’s time has been taken up by the legal/political fight that followed a Calgary police raid on Goliath’s Sauna and Texas Lounge, a gay bathhouse. When it occurred, he was a member of the Sexuality and Gender Diversity Committee, a police liaison group. The episode struck an especially personal chord with Lock – his partner was one of the clients charged along with the establishment’s owners and employees. He says he would have taken up the cause regardless, as the incident echoed a watershed series of raids in Toronto peaking in 1980 that stirred his blooming activist passions. His partner chose to fight the charges as a charter rights case. The Crown eventually stayed the charges against all involved.
Though Lock’s personal life was made easier, his activist heart regretted the missed opportunity to launch a charter challenge and make legal headway on sexual freedom. Through his work on the fight, Lock caught the attention of Egale, a national gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered rights advocacy group. He is now a regional board member.
As an activist, Lock’s unofficial constituents may not always support the issues he helps champion. Many same-sex couples felt that since they had no immediate desire nor plans to marry that they needn’t support an initiative to legalize same-sex marriage. While he and his partner of 25 years have no interest in getting married, Lock believes the fight to legalize gay marriage was a tremendously important one. His work with Egale on the issue has been tireless and ultimately effective. On July 20, the bill allowing same-sex couples the legal right to marry received royal assent in the House of Commons.
"The choice is now there," says Lock. "Equality is equality. This should be about access to a civil institution for all Canadians regardless of gender or sexual orientation."
The part he played in the massive collective political victory marks a high point in Lock’s long activist career. He’s uncomfortable taking credit, but acknowledges his pride in having made a significant contribution to the fight.
"We knew it would be a big issue, but we didn’t anticipate how big," he says.
He illustrates the importance of the victory by recalling the rights vacuum that existed shortly after he came out and turned activist in 1980. In Alberta it was then legal to fire a person or deny them a job or rental accommodation simply because they were gay, or were assumed to be gay. The Vriend vs. Alberta case, which arose from the firing of Delwin Vriend, an instructor at Edmonton’s King’s College, changed this. It took seven years before the Supreme Court finally ruled that non-heterosexual persons could not be excluded from the protection of existing human rights legislation.
This is fresh history, but it is a long time in the life of a community, explains Lock. People have since come out who may be completely unaware that these basic rights were so recently won. The fact that people were ever denied anything on the basis of their sexual preferences comes as a shock. The community, he says, has gone through a sea of change over 25 years.
"Now that we have same-sex marriage, or equal marriage, in place, 25 or 30 years from now we’re going to look back on this era the way some of us look back on the civil rights era going ‘Separate drinking fountains? Couldn’t eat at the same lunch counter? What shallow-end of the gene pool types were opposed to that?’"
The rights earned in this latest fight will, says Lock, come to be taken for granted, likening the progression to that of feminism. It’s become a cliché, he says: "Young women will say, ‘I’m not a feminist but….’ Then they come out with what my generation sees as feminist dogma. ‘I have the right to the same wage as some guy.’ Yes, that makes you a feminist.
"They’re so used to having the rights their mothers and grandmothers fought for and that’s the way it should be. That’s what we’re fighting for. So that the next generation goes, ‘Yeah, that’s normal.’"
Egale’s limited staff and resources were stretched thin and its agenda dominated by the legal marriage fight. Once the decision came down, Lock and his colleagues joked ironically, "That’s great! But now what? I’m not ready to take up crocheting." There are always issues, however, and he shares the feeling of relief within the organization that it’s free to refocus on a range of sexual freedom, queer youth and transsexual rights issues.
These will be tough to sell compared to the relatively mainstream fight for legal marriage. Popular perception, Lock cites, equates transsexuality with the Jerry Springer show. "Most people don’t get it. They think it’s a choice," he says. "No, it’s a medical condition that needs to be rectified by surgery to bring the body in line with the psyche."
For Lock, activism means being actively involved in community. "From my position," he says, "I don’t see how one can be actively involved in whichever community they may belong to and not be politically active. If you’re a person of conscience and you look around and you think ‘this is just not right, somebody has to fix this.’ Well, yes, you have a particular responsibility to yourself to try and make a change."
That’s why the city’s most active activist insists he’ll remain so. "You do it," he concludes, "because you’ll explode if you don’t." |
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