Imagine getting pulled into an office by your boss and an RCMP officer and asked, point blank, if you are a homosexual. Or being cornered at a party and threatened with criminal charges if you didn't reveal the names of gays and lesbians you know who work for the federal government. How about being fired on the spot based on gossip and trumped-up allegations?

While these scenarios might seem like nightmares out of the McCarthy era, they played out over and over in Canada, from the 1950s until the 1980s. A little-known fact is that the Canadian state purged thousands of suspected lesbians and gay men from the government, the military and the RCMP from the 1950s until the early 1980s, considering them national security risks because of being open to being blackmailed. (Up until 1969, under Canada's criminal law, homosexuality was punishable by up to 14 years in prison.) This destroyed people's careers and, in many cases, forced them out of the closet, harming their relationships with their families.

Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile's explosive new book, The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, details the RCMP's campaigns against gay and lesbian workers in the federal public service. The following is an interview with Gary Kinsman, a professor of sociology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, and one of Canada's leading authorities on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

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