Historically speaking, the notion of homosexuality has been the cause of major conflicts for the last two millennia. For centuries, people considered different based solely on their sexual orientation have been shunned, alienated, imprisoned, and, in extreme cases, even murdered all around the world. More specifically, the issue of homosexuality reached its apex in Canada in the post-Confederation era from the 1900s to the 1960s. Throughout those decades, the federal government of Canada placed a huge emphasis on the then entrenched “typical family structure,” consisting of the male breadwinner, the stay-at-home wife, and around two or three children (even more during the post-WWII decades). That being said, homosexuals were viewed as a threat to the heterosexual family structure, which was the fundamental social fabric at the time. It can be argued that the major factor leading to the quest for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada was the case of Everett George Klippert in the 1960s. For many federal government politicians at the time, such as Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau (Prime Minister from 1968-1979), Klippert’s case brought to light the imprecision of the laws and legal concepts concerning homosexuals and, by extension, homosexuality as a whole. In the following paragraphs, this essay will first provide a general context of how homosexuals were treated and/or perceived in the first half of the 20th century. Subsequently, an in depth examination of the Wolfenden Report’s view of morality and criminality, concerning homosexuality, being two mutually exclusive concepts, as well as legal concepts of “gross indecency” and “the dangerous sexual offender,” prior to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969, and the laws, amendments, and reforms established in subsequent years will provide the reader with an explanation of how Everett George Klippert’s court case lead politicians such as Trudeau to realize that the existing laws needed to be amended for Canadian society to become more explanatory and less illogical in nature, if that is the right word to describe it. To put things into context, from a social standpoint, homosexuals were, as it is mentioned above, considered to be a threat to the fundamentally heterosexual social fabric and family structure emphasized by the federal government of Canada in the first half of the 20th century, especially during the post-war decades of the 1940s to the 1960s (Warner, 31). From a psychological standpoint, homosexuals, during those same decades, were considered “perverse, abnormal, deviant, neurotic” beings whose latent homosexual tendencies were a result of a medical disorder, brought about by environmental and psychological circumstances, which could be, and ought to be cured, for the sake of society as a whole (Warner, 23-24). From a legal standpoint, from the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1960 to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969, homosexuality was considered such a serious crime that the above-mentioned document contained a passage stating that “men and institutions remain free only when freedom is founded upon respect for moral and spiritual values and the rule of law” (Warner, 31), which, during the aforementioned years, meant that homosexuals went against the social fabric suggested by the law, which is explained at the beginning of the paragraph. Following the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969, many of the laws concerning homosexuality, as well as the legal terms associated with them, were amended/reformed to forever reshape the way society viewed homosexuality from the 1970’s until the present day in 2013. The Wolfenden Report, published in 1957 in the UK by Sir John Wolfenden and his colleagues, played a huge role in the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969. In short, the Wolfenden Report argued that homosexual “activities” performed in private should not be considered illegal. Similarly, neither should it be considered a disease, as, in most cases, it acts as the sole symptom (Wikipedia). To put it bluntly, the Wolfenden Report urged that public statutes avoid the attempt to legislate morality and that they concern themselves only with sexual acts that offend public decency or disrupt order (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Ten years later, the Wolfenden Report was used in the court case of Everett George Klippert, when it was cited and used against the Supreme Court of Canada, when he attempted to appeal his guilty verdict of 1966. As virtually no evidence existed suggesting that Klippert was a danger and a threat to society, save for the conclusions reached by the psychologists who analyzed him while he was in jail, the Supreme Court literally made a judgment to deny Klippert’s appeal based on their moral judgment (Kinsman, 262). No laws could be referenced, aside from the extremely biased dangerous sexual offender legislation, which branded each and every homosexual male as a dangerous sexual offender (Kinsman, 262). That being said, laws were desperately needed so that homosexuals could be treated fairly and be considered equal to everyone else in society. While homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, discrimination against homosexuals continued for decades afterwards, and is even still present in 2013. With the establishment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms from the Constitution Act of 1982, laws were finally implemented and employed so as to bring about some legal bases upon which homosexuality could be defined. For instance, section 15(1) of the Charter explains that individuals are equal before and under the law (Hurley, 2). For instance, in the case of Haig v. Canada in 1992, the Ontario Court of Appeal maintained that the exclusion of sexual orientation from the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1979 violated the aforementioned section 15(1) of the Charter (Hurley, 2). Finally there was something for the courts to rely on when dealing with cases of homosexuality. From 1890 until the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada in 1969, the legal term “gross indecency” was used almost like a weapon, if you will, against homosexual males by the police force of those decades (Warner, 19). When it was first introduced into legislative practices, gross indecency was defined so as to apply to “every male person who, in public or in private, commits any act of gross indecency with another male person” (Warner, 19). To anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of political science, this statement is semantically void, as the term “gross indecency” itself is not defined within the quote. This left the courts of the above-mentioned decades to decide upon the definition of “gross indecency” for themselves (Warner, 19). Even after the term was amended in 1953 to apply more to lesbians and heterosexuals, gay men were, on average, more likely to be charged with gross indecency than the aforementioned groups (Warner, 19). The legal quest of one Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1969, which ultimately lead to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada, sought to reform/amend the laws and legal concepts, such as “gross indecency,” which applied to homosexuals, but were too vague and imprecise in the eyes of politicians to make valid arguments against homosexuality. In the case of Everett George Klippert, the last Canadian man to be brought to court and imprisoned for homosexuality in the 1960s, the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court of Canada to deny his appeal to his previous guilty verdict took solely into account the conclusions reached by the psychologists who analyzed him, declaring him to be a threat to other men, as he could not control his sexual desires (Kinsman, 260-261). As “gross indecency” was quite an abstract term in the early 1960s, it did not take into account factors such as the age of Klippert’s sexual partners, whether or not the intimate relations were consensual, and whether Klippert resorted to physical abuse to relieve himself of his cravings. In 1967, two years before the decriminalization of homosexuality, Trudeau began his quest by attempting to convince the other members of the federal government to redefine “gross indecency” to exclude private, consenting homosexual partners (Kinsman, 267), criteria which Klippert actually met to the letter, no matter what the Supreme Court may have believed. Even after the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969, homosexuals were still targets of discrimination, and there weren’t many laws in their favour that they could rely on in court (Hurley, 1). With the Constitution Act of 1982, however, homosexuals were able to cite section 15 of the Charter, which states, simply put, that each individual is equal before and under the law (Hurley, 2). Finally, in 1995, the Supreme Court’s decision in the Egan trial asserted, “sexual orientation is such an “analogous” ground, and therefore a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Charter,” (Hurley, 2), thus making homosexuality, once and for all, a prohibited justification for intolerance and discrimination. Much like the use of the legal term of “gross indecency” was used against homosexual males prior to 1969, the very same can be said for another legal term pertaining to homosexuality, better known as the “dangerous sexual offender.” Prior to this name however, the term became popularized following an amendment to the criminal code of Canada in 1948, when the concept was then known as the “criminal sexual psychopath” (Warner, 19). Then a psychologically influenced term, the “criminal sexual psychopath” was defined as “any individual likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, loss, pain or other evil on any person”, as said individual could not control his/her sexual desires (Warner, 19). Only in 1961 did the term become reformed by Parliament to the aforesaid “dangerous sexual offender,” which was then redefined as “any individual who is likely to commit another sexual offence” (Warner, 19). From 1961 until the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969, the term “dangerous sexual offender” was employed so as to apply to virtually any and all homosexual males who were having sex, whether regularly or not (Warner, 19). The only way a homosexual male could be safe from the strict laws was if he remained a virgin his entire life. In Klippert’s case, when he and his lawyer, Brian Crane, were trying to appeal his previous guilty verdict in 1966, the Supreme Court of Canada maintained that anybody who has been branded a dangerous sexual offender has to pose some type of threat to society, the term wouldn’t thrown around blindly; and with that, the Supreme Court denied Klippert’s request for an appeal (Kinsman, 260 & 261). Not only did the Supreme Court’s decision instigate the quest of Pierre Trudeau in 1967, but it also lead to the formation of gay rights movements in the 1970s, as even though homosexuality was officially decriminalized in 1969, homosexuals were still discriminated against, and have been to this very day. At a gay rights conference in 1975, a movement called the National Gay Rights Coalition (NGRC) was formed from the old National Gay Election Coalition, its immediate predecessor (Smith, 296). The ultimate goal of the NGRC was to eliminate discrimination against homosexuals in such areas as the workplace, the army, the RCMP, and several others (Smith, 296). In 1979, the Canadian Human Rights Commission explicitly made clear their suggestion to include “sexual orientation” as prohibited grounds for discrimination (Hurley, 2). In 1986, the federal government responded to a parliamentary committee report the previous year. In this response, the federal government promised to “take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that sexual orientation is a prohibited ground of discrimination in relation to all areas of federal jurisdiction” (Hurley, 2), as per section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, established in the Constitution Act of 1982, which states that each and every individual is equal before and under the law. Shockingly, it took until 2009 for Canada to become a nation that legally accepts homosexuals in all jurisdictions, as Alberta did not sign on to amend its provincial laws to eliminate sexual orientation as grounds for discrimination until that year (Hurley, 3). In summary, to say that the court case of Everett George Klippert in the latter half of the 1960s in Canada instigated the legal quest of politicians such as Pierre Trudeau, as well as the need to implement laws that could define homosexuality on a legal basis, would be quite an accurate argument. With the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957, it became clear to the courts that there was a major lack of incriminating evidence on Klippert’s part, save for the biased conclusions of the analyzing psychologists. Furthermore, After the Supreme Court denied Klippert’s request for an appeal to the guilty verdict reached in 1966, it became clear to Trudeau that such legal terms as “gross indecency” and the “dangerous sexual offender” were quite abstract in nature, as they were used almost like weapons by the courts to apply to virtually every “practicing” homosexual male in Canada. As such, the quest began not only to decriminalize homosexuality but to eradicate it as grounds for discrimination in society as well. While homosexuality has long been decriminalized, discrimination against homosexuals and homophobia are ever-present nuisances in today’s society of 2013. What struck me as odd was the fact that Klippert was not released from prison until 1971, two years after the decriminalization of homosexuality. While he was originally supposed to be tried for arson, it makes no sense that he should have remained in prison for those extra two years, as the courts paid virtually no attention to his cases of arson, and focused most of their energy on his being a homosexual, and punishing him for carrying out his sexual desires.

Works Cited
Hurley, Mary C. "Sexual Orientation and Legal Rights." Library of Parliament, 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. .
Kinsman, Gary W. "The Struggle for Law Reform." The Regulation of Desire: Homo and Hetero Sexualities. Montréal, Québec, Canada: Black Rose, 1996. 251-79. Web. Smith, Miriam. "Social Movements and Equality Seeking: The Case of Gay Liberation in Canada." Canadian Journal of Political Science 31 (1998): 285-309. JSTOR. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.
Warner, Tom. "The Roots of Oppression." Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2002. 17-41. Web.