But it wasn’t to last. Even before they were married, Svend had wondered if he might be gay.
He’d see an attractive man — a lifeguard, perhaps — and joke about it to Patricia. They’d laugh, but he wasn’t really joking. The more he tried to have that “normal” life, to force his identity into the slot the world had carved out for him, the more it hurt. Longing for an escape, he began to drink even more. Burying himself in school and volunteer work and drowning himself in alcohol worked for a while, but eventually the denial caught up to him.
Robinson, while intoxicated, had his first homosexual liaison with a student politician from another university.
He’d heard what everyone had heard about homosexuals: that they were depraved, sick, predatory. He knew he wasn’t those things. What he couldn’t fathom was how to reconcile his feelings with how society felt. Hiding his homosexuality from Patricia made him feel dishonest, but he knew how much pain it would cause her if she knew the truth. One night he drove her to a beautiful spot at UBC overlooking the ocean and told her there was something she needed to know. At first she blamed herself. They tried counselling, but their marriage was over, and in 1975 they separated. …
He felt awful about hurting Patricia, but even more powerful was Svend’s feeling that he was now a new man. At first he’d visit gay bars tentatively, using a fake name. … He even signed up to audition as a go-go dancer at a gay bar, but got cold feet, abandoning the attempt as soon as the first funky notes of “Little Green Bag” began to play.
Robinson quit drinking before winning his Burnaby seat in the 1979 election. The skinny, youthful 27-year-old was at one point not allowed into the MPs’ special entrance, as a security guard didn’t take seriously “this kid in sandals and shorts.” But once inside the House of Commons, Robinson made a strong impression within weeks of his arrival over a mini-scandal.
“Clearly, the NDP in young and slight Svend Robinson from Burnaby have a rookie who needs hardly any seasoning,” wrote Douglas Fisher in The Vancouver Sun. “He commands the floor when on his feet.”
In the 1980s, Robinson successfully badgered Pierre Trudeau’s government to change the wording of Canada’s rape law and bring regulatory changes to help prison inmates. He also successfully advocated for changes to legislation relating to young offenders and access to information, and fought to improve pensions for RCMP widows, according to Truelove.
But his most significant advocacy efforts relate to Trudeau’s 1982 Charter of Rights, the book recounts. He played a key role in successfully pushing for the inclusion of women’s rights, and for the right to trial by jury for serious offences. With colleague Ian Waddell, he also successfully filibustered against a bid to include an amendment in 1983 adding property rights — which Robinson, who feared that right would prevent government from imposing rent controls or regulate health and environmental matters, considered his greatest achievement.
Robinson’s contribution to the debate greatly affected the document, earning him high praise. “He, perhaps more than any other opposition MP, has been the architect of the Charter of Rights,” wrote Michael Valpy in The Vancouver Sun. “No MP worked harder or more effectively to improve the constitutional proposals.”
While Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and a number of his ministers were supportive of gay rights, Progressive Conservative backbenchers were merciless in using personal innuendo to attack Robinson’s bid to expand gay rights protection, referring to gay men as “fairies” and “sodomites, pederasts and proponents of bestiality.”
Most of the time, these MPs were content to hurl snide comments about hairdressers at Robinson, the suspected homosexual, as he made his speeches. (“Why aren’t you at Rock Hudson’s funeral?” PC MP Dan McKenzie shouted on the day of the gay actor’s cremation after his death from AIDS.) Other times, they went out of their way to feature fiery condemnations of homosexuality in their own speeches.
In 1988, Robinson’s Ottawa and Burnaby offices were flooded with letters — some of it grateful, many others like the one containing a bullet and a request that he use it on himself — after he publicly announced his homosexuality. He made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t be able to keep.
Young, gay Canadians from across the country wrote to Robinson, telling him that, because of him, they could envision a future without compromise. “I owe you my freedom,” wrote one. …
Being a role model meant that his behaviour was constantly being scrutinized, and that put increasing pressure on him. “I can stumble, but I can’t fall. My life has to be squeaky clean in every conceivable way,” he would later tell Maclean’s.
In 1989, Robinson convinced Captain Michelle Douglas to take part in a challenge of the Canadian military’s prohibition against gays and lesbians.
“Not one to watch from the sidelines, Robinson acted as (lead lawyer Clayton) Ruby’s assistant, an arrangement both lawyers found useful. Together, they prepared a challenge that would be devastating to the government lawyers assigned the task of defending the discriminatory policy.
It never got that far. In October 1992, just as Douglas and Ruby were about to go through the doors of the Federal Court of Canada to argue their case, they received word that the military was abandoning the policy against homosexual members. … It was a historic announcement — and one that came nearly 20 years before a similar about-face in the U.S.
In 1993, Robinson — infuriating his caucus colleagues in Ottawa and the B.C. NDP government under Mike Harcourt — was among hundreds of activists arrested for setting up anti-logging blockades at Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The following summer, after heavy pressure from media critics to prosecute him, Robinson was sentenced to a 14-day jail term at Ford Mountain Correctional Centre in Chilliwack.
On Parliament Hill, MPs are treated like aristocrats. If a member offhandedly voices a preference for chocolate milk instead of regular milk, chocolate milk is waiting at the next committee meeting, along with a plate of cookies. … On Parliament Hill, nobody ever tells a member to wash out flower pots for the greenhouse, collapse and stack cardboard boxes, or bag pop cans collected by other prisoners, but that’s what Robinson did at Ford Mountain. He lived in a unit with 54 other inmates and was treated like any other prisoner. He earned $3 a day performing the same menial tasks assigned to the other inmates, including painting an outhouse.”
In 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada narrowly rejected the appeal from Sue Rodriguez, a British Columbian suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The Victoria woman had challenged Canada’s prohibition against doctor-assisted suicide. Robinson, her ally and eventually her close friend in the battle, was with her when she decided to break the law by ending her life through doctor-assisted suicide. Unable to find a Canadian doctor to help the process, Robinson enlisted a foreign doctor who has never been identified. Robinson, who wasn’t charged, describes here in detail for the first time what happened that day inside Rodriguez’s Victoria home.
“I entered through the back yard and through the sliding glass door, which had been left open for me. Sue was alone in her bed downstairs. She was very calm and clear. I again asked her if she was certain that she wanted to go ahead that day, and told her there was absolutely no problem in putting it off. She was very firm and told me that she knew that this was the time.
“She said that her husband had taken her son away to a movie and lunch, but would call in the afternoon to make sure that everything was okay. She had decided upon the music that she wanted played at the time of her death, [German recording artist] Deuter, and I put the tape in the player and turned up the volume after she said it was too quiet.
She laughed at one point and said that I was more nervous than she was, and she calmed me. I was in tears and felt so helpless, but also so inspired by her great courage.
“After she received a lethal dose of secobarbital, she asked me to hold her as she listened to the music. I got into bed beside her and held her in my arms. At one point the doorbell rang, and I panicked and looked out the window, only to see two earnest Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door. Eventually they left, much to our relief.
“Sue slipped into unconsciousness, but it took a very long time for her heart to stop beating. I lay with her until that time. It was so painful, but I was also very glad that I was able to be with her at the end, as I had promised her. When I was certain that she was dead, I covered her head with a sheet and went upstairs to call her family doctor to ask him to come and pronounce her dead. As well, I called the local RCMP detachment and told them that Sue had died with the assistance of a physician, and that they should come to her home. I made a very brief statement and told them that I would be retaining legal counsel, and then called my friend and lawyer Clayton Ruby. They then let me leave the house, and I drove to the nearby town of Sidney where I spent the night at the Sidney Hotel. I did not sleep much that night.” |
發表於 2013-9-15 06:46
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