“It was harder to come out as a conservative than it was to come out as gay.”
That’s a phrase you’ll often hear from gay conservatives, including from Conservative party deputy leader Melissa Lantsman.
Gay conservatives say they’re being increasingly ostracized and targeted by progressive members of the queer community who are hostile to the idea that LGBT people can lean right.
Calgary-based gay talk show host David Oulton experienced this hostility first hand last month, when he was dropped by the LGBT network OutTV after voicing support for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her recently announced gender and parental rights policies. Oulton also faced online abuse from queer activists.
It turns out that Oulton is not alone. Several gay and lesbian conservatives from across Canada spoke to True North about their experiences with the queer community.
While queer activists like to portray their community as a diverse, inclusive and supportive safe space offering a sense of belonging, these things only tend to extend to progressives.
True North columnist Sue Ann Levy, who came out on the front page of the Toronto Sun in 2007, noted in an interview that she quickly went on to become a pariah within the queer community due to her writing, including her coverage of the move to ban police officers from the Toronto Pride Parade.
“When I started writing about BLM’s takeover, and I started writing about their finances, then they turned on me, and really, really nastily,” said Levy. “The head of Pride back then did a whole thing on Facebook about how I don’t deserve a seat at the table, like I’m not truly gay because I’m conservative.”
Levy says this form of thinking is not okay. “We have to accept each other, it doesn’t matter your politics. There are a lot of gay conservatives.”
Calgary-based lesbian writer Eva Kurlova believes queer activists view anyone who is not progressive as the enemy.
“People on the left, especially the far left, tend to really see anybody who’s right of centre, even slightly right of centre, as just immoral, just a bad person, a bad character,” said Kurlova. “They don’t think it’s someone who simply wants better for society, but in different ways. They think it’s just like a bad person who wants bad for society.”
She added: “There’s this sense that conservative people are incredibly homophobic, and so if I’m siding with them, then I’m self-hating, I’m a traitor.”
Accusations of self-hatred and treason aimed at gay conservatives have gotten more prevalent amidst conservative premiers implementing new parental rights and gender policies.
James Decker and Jason Brandick, both gay supporters of Alberta’s Smith government, say they’ve experienced online abuse from the queer community over their politics.
Decker told True North he faced an online smear and harassment campaign on Facebook, as well as death threats.
“I’ve seen the incredibly hurtful things that they’ve said. And I would never do that to someone, regardless of their political stance. I would never, ever drag them through the mud like that,” he said.
“And what they don’t realize is that their posts and their little jabs and the campaign against me had reach across Canada. I was receiving all sorts of lovely, lovely death threats, I had to get the police involved. I’m worried about my family’s safety.”
Brandick has also faced hateful comments, with people accusing him of being a traitor, a Nazi and even a child killer, simply for supporting Smith.
“I’ve been told I should be forced into conversion therapy, I’ve been told that I should be forced to get a lobotomy.”
Brandick, who lost his partner to suicide six years ago, takes great offence to claims that his support for Smith equates to wanting trans-identified children dead.
“I think it’s disgusting. I don’t understand why anyone would weaponize the suicide of a loved one. It blows my mind, I think it’s beyond inappropriate,” he said.
Transgender conservatives have also been on the receiving end of online abuse from progressives.
Decker says queer activists have tried to erase and invalidate the lived experience of one of his transgender friends, who supports Smith. Meanwhile, Tiffany Gillis, another trans woman who supports Smith, noted on her X (formerly Twitter) account that the vast majority of the hate she has received has been from the left.
Haojun Li, a recent college graduate living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, told True North he did not bother getting involved in the queer community when he moved to Canada from China, knowing that he would not be welcomed as a gay conservative.
He said the expectations of him as a gay man, and as a visible minority, have eerie similarities to what he fled.
“I feel a lot of resemblance with my experience back in China, because in China you have to live according to your stereotypes… If you are a Chinese man, you should live up to the stereotype that belongs to a Chinese man,” he said.
“That’s the way I had to grow up, and I hated that way.”
National Post Columnist Adam Zivo, who is openly gay, knows the queer community well. Zivo has been an active promoter of LGBT causes, and has led pro-LGBT initiatives like a 2016 photography project celebrating queer love, an LGBT bus wrap, and LGBT art installations. He has also travelled to countries where LGBT people are oppressed to report on that oppression.
Despite this, Zivo noted that many in the queer community take issue with him not being a progressive.
“A lot of people liked me, and a lot of people did not like me… because I was fairly open about being a centrist at the time,” he said. “People would call me a fascist or a racist, and it was really annoying.”
The backlash from within the community increased when Zivo began writing for the National Post, where he has criticized, among other things, the push to medically transition young children.
Zivo also said that some of his gay friends have faced backlash from within the queer community just for associating themselves with him.
“One of my friends was literally kicked out of a party because he defended me at that party,” he said. “(Another) one of my close friends, I recently tagged him in an Instagram story, and then he reposted on his story… And he had several people contact him and say, ‘why are you hanging out with that Adam guy?’”
The people True North interviewed believe there is a growing numbers of gays and lesbians who are identifying conservative or simply not woke. However, fear of reprisals from the queer community is keeping many of these gays and lesbians silent.
“I do know a few other people who go to community events and clubs, and they have to really stay quiet about their support of this government, of this premier, of these policies,” noted Kurlova. “They have lost friends and they know when to keep their mouth shut.”
