Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Jim Burroway

July 17th, 2016

From The Body Politic (Toronto, ON), April 1983, page 18. (Source.)

From The Body Politic (Toronto, ON), April 1983, page 18. (Source.)

The Body Politic, Toronto’s gay newspaper, was known for keeping tabs on which gay bars were excluding which clientele for which reasons:

The fall bar hop for Gays and Lesbians at the University of Toronto (GLAUT) ended on a sour note this year when a group of about 20 gay men and lesbians was refused admission to The Outpost, a popular denim and leather bar at Jarvis and Gerrard Streets.

Brian Pronger, organizer of the yearly tour of local bars, reports that the group was stopped at the door October 15 by an employee, apparently the bouncer, who said they would all have to show age of majority cards. Several in the group began to reach for their cards when the employee suddenly called them “a bunch of rowdies’ ‘ and asked why they wanted “to go to a gay bar.”

Pronger says he was “aghast” to realize that the man thought they were straight: “I told him that we were most certainly gay and to prove it I showed him my Club Bath card.” The employee, however, remained intransigent and went on to say that if members of the group objected to being turned away they should “phone The Body Politic.”

He finally suggested they should all “go back to Buddy’s” (a bar popular with collegiate and post-collegiate types). Acting manager Bob Saunders told TBP the bar is concerned about crowds of straight kids coming into the bar. He felt the bouncer must have mistaken the GLAUT members for “a bunch of rowdy straights.”

Pronger notes that the primary purpose of the GLAUT bar hop is to introduce members to the Toronto bar scene. “I don’t think many of them will go back to The Outpost,” he said.

The bar has also been criticized for its policy of excluding women. Two local gay men wrote to TBP recently reporting two incidents in which women were told to leave the bar. In both cases, the management refused to discuss the policy, and the women met with a response similar to what the GLAUT members experienced.

The following month, John Allec returned to this incident for a Body Politic editorial on behalf of the newspaper’s collective:

In its bar listings, Toronto’s new gay magazine, Circuit, says of The Outpost: “You are made to feel at home and you will want to go back.” Such is the case, but only, it seems, if you can get in in the first place.

I’ve been in The Outpost, a leather and western bar, several times a week since it opened last year; it’s my favourite bar. As Circuit writes, “if you’re a real man — or can give a good imitation” you’ll feel right at home. Lately, the management seems to be making sure that no one else gets in to spoil the atmosphere. There have been several reports of women being rudely barred at the door and, on a Saturday night last month, a friend and I were behind a dozen or so youngish (mostly male) university students who were told to “go back to Buddy’s, where you belong.”

Although the barring is inconsistent so far, it may be an effort to assure The Outpost’s regular customers that they can dress like walking hardware stores without having to put up with curiosity seekers. In today’s strained economic cHmate, every drawing card counts, though the management should ask itself whether such a policy is worth the bad feelings, and the damage it could do to a community still learning to stand together. Even those in macho drag, often on the periphery of the gay scene and generally an older crowd, may have experienced the unpleasantness of being told they aren’t welcome at certain places.

Charges of discrimination because of age, race, sex, effeminacy and dress are not new to Toronto. But the last place the city’s gay community, which has shown exemplary and militant opposition to discrimination, should tolerate such practices is within its own institutions.

Gay communities in smaller centres do not have the resources to support special interest socializing — Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Halifax, for example, have long histories of lesbians and gay men partying side by side. Must a larger community force its members to choose friends by sex and clothes to make sure they can go out together on a Saturday night? Most lesbians and gay men (myself included, I suppose) probably do prefer to mix with people they’re attracted to. But it’s unacceptable that some establishments feel they should make that decision for us and take advantage of the fact that they can dictate who goes where.

Did I end up going into The Outpost after the incident that Saturday night? Well, yes. But I did feel uneasy, knowing that next time I just might not make it through.

[Sources: Jim Bartley. “Outpost Turfs out U of T Group Party.” The Body Politic (November 1982): 16.

John Allec. Editorial: “Left Out At The Outpost.” The Body Politic (December 1982): 6. Both issues are available online here.]

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