With the introduction of such a progay text on the public scene, it is not surprising that a traditionalist, antigay countermemory arose to contest its meaning and significance. In the days leading up to the unveiling of the Wood statue, conservative columnist Rachel Marsden wrote a scathing attack of the memorial and public officials’ assent to its presence in the National Post. Among the accusations, Marsden alleged Wood should primarily be remembered as a criminal “pervert” not a “gay icon,” that Wood cannot be sufficiently verified as gay, and that the visible sex act depicted on the base of the statue is damaging to children and other passers-by.156
Marsden is not the only voice to speak out against the public commemoration of Wood.157 However, as a Canadian citizen and public figure, Marsden is the most prominent and cited pontificator of the traditionalist countermemory. Her commentaries are widely circulated in public newspapers and quoted, reproduced, or linked to in other critiques. In many ways, her perspective is a central and consistent organizing text of this anti-Wood view. As such, Marsden’s articulation of the traditionalist countermemory is where I have focused this analysis.
While some of Marsden’s contestation of the Wood statue echoes the typical “issue culture” arguments surrounding antigay rhetorics, she also offers a number of traditionalist readings against the official democratic memory of Wood that ask viewers, not to forget Wood,
156
Rachel Marsden, “A Statuesque Disgrace,” National Post, June 11, 2005, http://www.rachelmarsden.com /columns/woodstatue.htm (accessed February 26, 2011).
157
Examples include: “Alexander Wood is a Stiff,” The London Fog, July 13, 2005, http://thelondonfog.blogspot.com/2005/07/alexander-wood-is-stiff.html (accessed February 26, 2011); “…And a Penchant for Buggery,” Sick Day, June 16, 2005, http://einspahr.blogspot.com
/2005_06_12_archive.html (accessed February 26, 2011); “Celebrating Toronto’s Gay History?” Better
Left Said, July 22, 2005, http://notadesperatehousewife.mu.nu/archives/105985.php (accessed February
but to remember him differently.158 First, Marsden remembers Wood as a criminal, above and beyond his sexual orientation. She argues that if we must remember Wood (she may argue we should not), it is through this primary lens: “One of the monument’s plaques reads that Wood ‘suffered a homophobic scandal.’ Look, ‘homophobic’ implies that people were scared of this guy because he was gay. In reality, this event had nothing to do with his gayness — only his abuse of authority.”159 At latter points in her framing, Marsden argues that sexuality is irrelevant to this criminal act. She suggests that any one — homosexual or heterosexual — caught in such an act today would be equally charged and run out of town. While this demonstrates Marsden’s unfamiliarity with the shocking history of false charges used against GLBTQ people, it also reveals Marsden’s focus on only one piece of the larger statue.160 By foregrounding the fondling plaque and minimizing the rest of the statue, Marsden manages to increase the criminal ethos of Wood and his memory.
Marsden also seeks to criminalize not only Wood’s act, but also the representation of those acts. Marsden perpetually argues that the artistic depiction of Wood engaged in his scandalous act is essentially public pornography. Through such a reading, a traditionalist countermemory argues the act that made Wood infamous should be shielded from public view. According to Marsden, her view of gay visibility is clear: “For kids, that should mean lots of pretty rainbows and purple Teletubbies — not an illustration of something that could pass for a scene out of the Michael Jackson trial. If two people — gay or straight — were acting out this
158
Ralph R. Smith and Russel R. Windes, Progay/Antigay: The Rhetorical War Over Sexuality (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 35-6.
159
Marsden, “A Statuesque Disgrace.”
160
Gary David Comstock, Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 8, 12-13, 17-18.
same type of thing in public, they’d be tossed in the slammer.”161 Beyond the invective and punditry lies a legitimate means of framing queer memory: Gay identity is a sexual identity predicated on a sexual act. As such, this act should be private and representations of this act should be private as well. Thus, Wood the man and Wood the statue are visualizing not gay pride, but rather an illegal (and immoral) public act.
Second, Marsden argues for undermining Wood’s claim to homosexuality. For Marsden, the statue’s creators attempt to represent a visible gay identity in the statue. According to Marsden, this representation is illegitimate for Wood’s sexuality is ambiguous at best. Citing Councillor Rae in her article: “‘there’s no determination that [Wood] was gay.’ The evidence was only ever circumstantial. As Rae says, ‘out of the event, people felt that he was homosexual. But I don’t know if he was homosexual.’”162 In a separate article, Marsden claims not only is Wood’s sexuality in doubt, but the process by which historical sexuality is identified is suspect: “gay history lessons seem to consist largely of combing the books to find prominent male figures who were never confirmed homosexuals — such as former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, or renowned Toronto area pervert Alexander Wood — and slapping the gay label on them retroactively.”163 Through this process of destabilizing Wood’s homosexuality, Marsden seeks to challenge his legitimacy to public memory. In other words, the traditionalist countermemory reads Wood as just another unsexed, criminal. He becomes unremarkable and undisciplined and thus unworthy of memory. In no veiled way, Marsden is committing an act of mnemonicide.164
161
Marsden, “A Statuesque Disgrace.”
162
Marsden, “A Statuesque Disgrace.”
163
Rachel Marsden, “The Trouble with ‘Normal,’” National Post, June 25, 2005, http://www.rachelmarsden.com/columns/pubschools.htm (accessed February 26, 2011).
164
By virtue of this countermemory reading of the Wood statue, Marsden also offers a counterargument against queer public memory projects altogether. The potential for the Wood statue to reimagine the past to include an official, heroic gay identity is a threat to antigay rhetors. Marsden acts against this threat, not by recourse to morality and decency, but by destroying the grounds upon which queer public memory is justified. With Wood as her representative anecdote, Marsden makes criminal activity a disqualifying feature of public memory, virtually eliminating any historical queers in a world replete with anti-sodomy laws. Doubting Wood’s claim to homosexual identity, Marsden eliminates the remembering of anyone as gay whose sexuality cannot be proven definitively. In doing so, Marsden does not eliminate queer public memory per se, but sets the bar so high for making such a claim that almost no queer could meet it. At the end of her framing, Wood and all historical queers are no longer valuable enough, no longer gay enough, and thus no longer worth the public’s time. The result is the de facto evisceration of queer public memory, leaving in its wake only the traditional narratives of the heteronormative past. In essence, Marsden and the traditionalist countermemory roll back the value of remembering queer lives in any capacity. Heteronormativity is defended.
A simultaneous tactic of the traditionalist memory is to argue the Wood statue is not an official memory. Throughout her articles, Marsden perpetually links what is depicted in the statue to a mismanagement of public funds. She asserts that liberals have taken over government and official culture to hijack public morality:
Patchen Barss, spokesman for Mayor David Miller, told me this week that ‘as a city, we should celebrate Alexander Wood for his association with gay rights, for the way he supported Toronto’s tradition of respect for diversity, and also for his cheekiness and sense of humour.’ ‘Cheekiness’ only describes the shiny, round backside of Wood’s victim, as depicted by the monument — not Wood himself. This statement is nothing but spun-out revisionist history that only serves to whitewash a sordid tale of abuse.…The fact that taxpayers have funded this is a total disgrace.165
Marsden thus seeks to undermine the credibility of the city council. In doing so, she de- legitimates their ability to speak for the public. As such, Wood is recast as an insurgent countermemory while Marsden and her ilk reclaim the official public memory for themselves.
While a challenge to queer public memory itself, this traditionalist countermemory has some particularly compelling effects for the way gay space is situated within Toronto. In particular, Marsden’s equation of the statue with public sex or pornography has important material effects on issues of gay space. By equating the representation of gay sex in a public memorial with public sex, the statue and its subject become outlaws in need of disciplining.166 Thus, it is not surprising that Marsden urges her readers to keep their children away from the statue. Based upon the way the public memory of Wood is visualized, it becomes a marker not just of gay space, but also of immoral space. Gay space is constructed as deviant with the
165
Marsden, “A Statuesque Disgrace.”
166
possibility of lasting detrimental effect upon those who enter it — particularly children. Through resistively reading the statue as public sex, gay space in Toronto becomes condemned space upon which no one should tread.