As we near the end of the year, it's a good time to look back at what caught our readers' attention over the last 12(ish) months. So here are — according to Google Analytics — the 20 most read stories on xtra.ca in 2010 (we made it a top 20 list so we could squeeze in another John Baird story — hope he appreciates the effort).

 

 

20. Criminalization of herpes signals a turn for the worse

18. Gay couple burned from PEI home

17. Pride Toronto plans to censor the term Israeli apartheid

16. So much for John Baird’s reputation as a gutsy brawler

15. Pride Toronto in hiding after spirited denunciation from queer leaders

14. Zellers pulls ‘egg these transvestites’ shirt from stores

13. Lesbians kicked out of Waterloo café for kissing

12. Grindr tightens restrictions: no underwear, no cock size

11. He has a chauffeur! Rick Mercer’s epic John Baird smackdown

10. Exploring Amman’s gay spaces

9. Facebook reevaluates decision to censor trans man’s post-op chest pics

8. Another bloodbath as Toronto’s Proud FM fires four hosts

7. How the second world war changed gay life

6. Pride Toronto reverses ban on 'Israeli apartheid'

5. Trans guy banned from Facebook after uploading post-op chest pic

4. Fred Phelps’s son gets job promoting atheism, battling homophobia

3. Two lesbian youth found dead in Orangeville

2. Sex TV axed after decade-long shuffle between broadcasters

1. Open secret: John Baird outed

^{Source: Google Analytics, Jan 1-Nov 30, 2010}

Over the course of the last two years, Xtra has been tracking down the country’s queer literati and putting a tough question to them: if you had to recommend one book written by a gay, lesbian, bi or trans Canadian, what would you pick? Gay classics, hidden gems and touchstones of CanLit all made the cut.

The results were published regularly in Xtra's Ottawa edition until October. Here are some of the best of the lot:

If you step back from it, it’s a novel about the politicization of private lives (as you might expect from a novel that ends with all its main characters in a paddy wagon). It’s a marker of a hinge time between, say, Trudeau’s bedrooms of the nation (1967) and gay marriage (2005), a time just shy of the Charter of Human Rights (1982), a time when most people, including those in the book, don’t feel like they can be out, a time when being queer meant their children could be taken away.
--Anne Fleming on Jane Rule’s Contract With The World

Part meditation, part architectural study, part autobiography, part cultural study, part lament for the end of the world, and all, all, all pure gorgeous poetry (a word I apply to any piece of beautiful writing, no matter how it is formatted on the page), Touch to Affliction is a book that makes you feel like you are being led by a ghost through a maze.
--RM Vaughan on Nathalie Stephens’ Touch to Affliction

The short story is a perfect location for experimentation, and With rises fearlessly to the challenge. Some stories are plot-based, whereas others focus more on character, tone or atmosphere. We get a glimpse of the variety of people who end up homeless, the pros and cons of drug treatment centres and the terror and loneliness of child sex work.
--Sandra Alland on Cathleen With’s Skids

Stan Persky’s exploration of life in eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall is a post-modern tour de force whose strength lies in its seamless transitions between the subjective and the objective, the journalistic and the philosophical, the aesthetic and the sexy.
--Daniel Gawthrop on Stan Persky’s First We Take Berlin

Imagine you’ve stepped back in time 30 years or so. You’re coming out of the 519 Community Centre on your way to sit on the famous steps for a while and wander around Toronto’s gay village.  As you head down Church St, you notice a street vendor with an army-surplus shoulder bag and a small pile of pamphlets — a handsome, well-built young guy with a fashionable shag haircut. It’s 1979, don’t forget.
--Ian Young on Don Garner’s Dirty Laundry (Young also recommends Lawrence Braithwaite’s Wigger)

More from the series:
Brett Josef Grubisic on Don Hannah’s The Wise and Foolish Virgins
Mark Ambrose Harris on Derek McCormack’s The Haunted Hillbilly
Mariko Tamaki on Billeh Nickerson's Let Me Kiss It Better: Elixirs for the Not So Straight and Narrow
Farzana Doctor on Wayson Choy’s Not Yet
Bill Brown on Alberto Manguel’s Reading Pictures: What We Think About When We Look At Art

UPDATE: In a heated conversation with Xtra this afternoon Alberta Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky explained the second he learned homosexuality remained on the list of the Alberta government's mental disorders he acted to have it removed. Asked why it remained on the list long after its removal from China's list four years ago, the minister demanded, "Don't go there with me. I'm not going to be pointing fingers at the past. That's the end of the story."

Zwozdesky advised us to confirm the removal on the Alberta Health and Wellness site for ourselves: "Take a look because it was done in eight minutes."

A comparison between the revised Alberta Health and Wellness Diagnostic Codes pdf hosted on their site, and the old version below, reveals the ministry deleted the page listing "homosexuality," specifically page 66, though that move also eliminated bestiality, paedophilia, frigidity and impotence, alcohol dependence syndrome and drug dependence. 

As for an apology to gay and lesbian Albertans, Zwozdesky is curt: "you'd better ask the World Health Organization."

 

 

______________________________________________________________ 

One day a popular trivia question will read: name the country with the province where homosexuality continued to be included on a list of mental disorders four years after China removed it from their own. Answer: Canada!

Thanks to the work of activist Rob Wells and journalist Karen Kleiss it was revealed Tuesday the province with the highest GDP in Canada not only continues to list homosexuality as a mental disorder, but doctors in the province billed using the diagnostic code for homosexuality 1,782 times between 1995 and 2004.

^{Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky}

While the latest reports say Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky has vowed to remove homosexuality from the list (a move in accord with declassifications by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 and the Canadian Psychiatric Association in 1982), documents show the same promise was made in 1998 by then-health minister Halvar Jonson.

In a letter dated July 27, 1998, Jonson assures Liberal Heath Critic Gary Dickson the classification will be updated:

"A new coding structure has been developed which Alberta Health is considering. This new coding will address the concerns regarding the classification of the diagnostic code for homosexuality."

Following this week's public disclosure, Zwozdesky made the same promise: "It is simply an incorrect and unacceptable classification and I’ve ordered it to be removed immediately.”

We'll believe it when we see it.

Xtra has contacted the office of the Alberta health minister to confirm its removal but has yet to receive a response. 

Perhaps the broom closet dedicated to the struggle for gay rights at the nearby Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg can reserve a space beside the mop buckets for commemorating this pivotal moment in Alberta's history.

 

The United Nations has voted to restore "sexual orientation" to a resolution opposing the unjustified killing of minority groups.

The Associated Press reports:

The assembly on Tuesday voted 93 in favor of the United States' proposal to restore the previous language, with 55 countries against and 27 abstaining. The assembly then approved the amended resolution 122 in favor, with 0 votes against, and 59 abstentions

PREVIOUSLY:

UN removes 'sexual orientation' from execution proscription

Rights groups condemn "sexual orientation" removal at UN

Should Canada have demanded more from UN execution proscription? 

 

One of the two new senators announced by Stephen Harper on Dec 20 told Xtra in a 2008 interview he thinks being gay is a choice.

Rev Don Meredith, of the GTA Faith Alliance, and Larry Smith, a former CFL commissioner, will fill two vacancies in the Senate, giving the Conservatives an outright majority in the unelected body.

^{(Jenna Wakani)}

Back in early 2008, Rev Meredith spoke to Xtra during his by-election run for the Toronto-Centre seat vacated by long-time Liberal MP Bill Graham. 

To a question about his personal position on same-sex marriage, the Conservative candidate replied, "It's the right of individuals to choose their orientation," and when asked if he thinks being gay is a choice he answered, "Individuals have chosen."

He also answered questions on the age of consent for anal sex, funding AIDS vaccine research and was asked if he thought homosexuality is a sin. Rev Meredith ducks the sin question, though he concedes, "We do the same physiological things — we need to eat, we need to sleep, we need food, we need shelter, we need good healthcare — that's the crucial thing."

Read the whole interview here.

Rev Meredith lost the by-election with only 12.5 percent of the vote.