"Kids Not Rights, Is Their Craving": Sex Education, Gay Rights, And the Threat of Gay Teachers (Essay‪)‬

IN DECEMBER 1977, TORONTO SUN COLUMNIST Claire Hoy revealed the "true" goal of the gay community's campaign to secure human rights protections. (1) Contrary to its stated goal of equality, Hoy believed the community wanted to remove any of the legal barriers preventing homosexuals from "getting their prophets into the schools and spreading their seamy message to young impressionable kids." So Hoy (1977d) confidently declared, "kids not rights, is their craving." (2) Claire Hoy wrote his column as Toronto citizens were still reeling from the horrific sexual assault and murder of 12-year-old shoeshine boy Emanuel Jaques, which had occurred earlier that August. Four days after he disappeared, Jaques was found dead atop a building on Yonge Street. Emanuel's murder had come just days after the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) recommended, for the first time, adding sexual orientation protections to the province's human rights code. (3) As gruesome details of Jaques' final hours appeared in Toronto newspapers, those opposed to the recommendation saw his murder as a cautionary tale; urging a go-slow approach to any expansion of lesbian and gay rights. Generally, Toronto newspaper columnists and editorialists expressed support for the OHRC recommendation. However, this support was contingent on the receipt of assurances that rights protections would not preclude schools from firing homosexual teachers. Evangelists joined with a number of newspaper editors and columnists to demand these reassurances. Hoy and others did so as it was common knowledge that homosexual teachers promoted homosexuality and preyed on children. This paper addresses how Toronto newspapers and evangelists came to promote the necessity of shielding school-children from homosexual teachers. Specifically I consider how Jaques' murder and subsequent events were constituted in, and constitutive of, conditions that made it possible for gay rights opponents to characterize gay teachers as preying on children. (4)