Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Bill C-150: A Rational Approach to Homosexual Acts, 1968–69

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Between 1968 and 1969, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau sparked a controversy surrounding his liberal government's passage of Bill C-150, which not only decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in private, but also polarized supporters of natural law and positive law. What tipped the balance in favor of a more secular analysis of homosexuality? In the post-World War II era, three events were particularly relevant to the successful passage of Bill C-150: the Kinsey (1948 Kinsey, A. C. 1948. Sexual behavior in the human male, Philadelphia: W.B. Sanders. [Google Scholar] ) studies, Britain's Wolfenden Report (1957), and the Supreme Court of Canada case Klippert v. The Queen ( des Rivieres & Shipley, 1967 des Rivieres, F. and Shipley, M. 1967. “Canada law reports: The Supreme Court of Canada”. In Klippert v. The Queen, Ottawa: King's Printer. [Google Scholar] ). However, the Liberals, Conservatives, Social Credit Party, and the Ralliement Créditistes were all influenced by the social construction of inversion, openly expressing a Judeo-Christian natural law bias during Debates of the House of Commons (1968-69). Nonetheless, it was the Liberals that were identified as forces within Canadian politics that could separate legalism from moralism, even while retaining personal moral stances against homosexuals. It is this paradox that is often forgotten when discussing liberal policy in Canada during the late 1960s.

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