Celebrate Pride Week in Vancouver by learning about the life of one man who changed the course of history for the LGBTQS community in Canada.
Gross Indecency: The Everett Klippert Story explores the life of Calgary bus driver Everett George Klippert who became the last Canadian to be jailed for homosexuality.
The documentary is told through the eyes of Kevin Allen, research lead at the Calgary Gay History Project and has a Vancouver connection.
Allen says Vancouver-based gay activist Douglas Sanders went to the penitentiary to interview Kilppert in 1968 and wrote about it in the Association for Social Knowledge's newsletter. "It's one of the only published interviews by Everett in the historical record."
Klippert's troubles begin when the father of one of his lovers makes a complaint to police, which results in Klippert being arrested and charged with 18 counts of gross indecency. He goes to jail for four years and his name is published in the local paper.
When he is released, Klippert moves to the Northwest Territories and begins working as a mechanic. When the 39-year-old man is questioned by police about a suspicious fire he ends up telling the officers he is gay. Police conclude that he had nothing to do with the fire but he is persecuted as a dangerous sexual offender that is likely to reoffend.
His sister is a legal secretary and advocates for his release. "The love that she had for her brother cohabited with her desire to support him and to help him. She lobbied for years to make sure he had the right lawyers and never gave up on him," says director Laura O'Grady.
Outrage over the case, which was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada.
Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced a bill to decriminalize private, consensual, homosexual acts between consenting adults over the age of 21 that became law in 1969.
The Klippert case prompted Trudeau's famous quote, "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation."
Klippert was given a full pardon from the government, released from jail in 1971 and died in 1996 at the age of 69.
The documentary is told through the eyes of Kevin Allen, research lead at the Calgary Gay History Project. Allen says Pride began as a protest that morphed into a celebration, which he says is a good thing, but "there are still human rights issues that we're struggling with in this country, particularly transgender rights."
"There's a lot more work the community could do. Inserting history into Pride helps us remember how far and how quickly we've come and how precious and fragile those rights are," he says.
The TELUS Originals documentary short is being released today, July 31, just days after the Calgary police formally apologized for their historic treatment of "the gender and sexually diverse" community.
Watch it here:
