Above: Douglas Janoff (left), author of Pink Blood, facilitated a roundtable on homophobic violence in Canada with participation from Roger Leishman (center), attorney on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, and Terry Price, legislative counsel to the Washington state legislature.
By Anne Hilton, Outreach Coordinator, Canadian Studies Center
In November the Canadian Studies Center was fortunate to partner with the UW Libraries and the Q Center to offer an academic roundtable entitled “The Impact of Homophobia on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Citizens: A Canada-U.S. Comparative Perspective.” Douglas Janoff, author of Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada (2005), joined us to provide the history of the LGBT rights movement in Canada.
Janoff has spent years researching homophobic violence around the world. He discussed both the statistics that he’s uncovered regarding homophobic violence in Canada as well as the methodological difficulties involved in measuring crimes that are chronically under-reported or incorrectly defined.
Also joining the roundtable were Roger Leishman, attorney on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, and Terry Price, legislative counsel to the Washington state legislature. Both Leishman and Price provided insight into the history of LGBT rights legislation in Washington state, and Leishman also discussed Washington state and U.S. litigation history with respect to LGBT rights.
UW Librarians Cass Hartnett, U.S. Documents and LGBT Studies Librarian, and Sion Romaine, Canadian Studies and Serials Acquisitions, aided the Canadian Studies Center in making the roundtable a success by creating an online guide to the reading list suggested by Janoff, available at http://guides.lib.washington.edu/content.php?pid=82333.
This roundtable was supported, in part, by funding from the Center’s Title VI grant, U.S. Department of Education, Office of International Education and Graduate Program Services.