User:HealeyDan/sandbox/Rick Bébout

(11 January 1950 - 10 June 2009) editor, activist, and correspondent, was an important figure in the intellectual and political history of Toronto's gay and lesbian movement. From 1977 to 1986 he was a member of the collective publishing The Body Politic, a Canadian monthly magazine for gay liberation. His correspondence with lesbian writer Jane Rule reflected on the issues animating Canada's gay and lesbian activist community during these years. After leaving the magazine he worked for the Aids Committee of Toronto, and in 1999 he received the Ontario AIDS Network Honour Roll Award for his contributions to preventing the spread of HIV.

Early life

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The Body Politic

Joining the collective that published The Body Politic, Bébout found a home for his gifts as an organizer and administrator. There were no 'job titles' for those who produced the collectively-run periodical, but Bébout commissioned editorial content and eventually led production of the magazine on successive forms of typesetting technologies. When police raided the magazine in December 1977, removing virtually all its subscription records and financial materials, Bébout found an overlooked box with subscription computer cards, enabling the magazine to maintain contact with its readers. He wrote a major long article, "Is there Safe Sex?" in 1983, reviewing the scientific knowledge about the transmission of AIDS and articulating a pro-sex response to medical caution about gay male sex. He corresponded with contributors in Canada and internationally to secure content and it was out of this exchange that his long correspondence with novelist Rule evolved.

Correspondence with Jane Rule

In 1981 [?] Bébout began writing to Jane Rule to discuss editorial matters; the novelist, who lived on Galiano Island in British Columbia, had a regular column in the magazine. Their correspondence snowballed into a regular exchange of ideas about queer life in Canada, the USA, and the wider world. They debated the merits and dangers of pornography and censorship, exchanged observations about lesbian and gay love and sex, noted key political developments in the AIDS crisis, and shared personal observations about their respective and very distinctive social environments. Bébout's letters to Rule expressed his passion for sexual liberation freed of heteronormative constraints. The nature of love as an expression of queerness was a preoccupation for both correspondents, and Bébout's emphasis on desire and responsibility caught a tension in gay men's thinking during the HIV/AIDS crisis years of the 1980s. He recounted his frequent visits to Toronto's changing gay bar scene, stories of his flirtations and love affairs, and his experience of sex and illness in the heart of the city's gay community. Bébout's perspective on the health crisis were shaped by his HIV+ status, and by his loss of so many friends [Insert quotation here from letter in which he summarized the numbers.].

AIDS activism

In 1987, Bébout began working for the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT). He contributed to writing safe-sex publicity, and later a manual for care-teams helping people with AIDS. He personally served on the team caring for activist and English professor Michael Lynch, one of the organization's founders.

Other projects

Bébout became a Canadian citizen. From the early 1970s he had a strong interest in the history of Toronto and particularly its architecture. He co-edited a book on Union Station, the city's main railway hub, that contributed to the campaign to save this structure.

Bébout's online memoirs and writing projects expanded in early 2000s with personal reminiscences of three decades of gay life in Toronto entitled Promiscuous Affections; a study of Toronto's hip and down-at-heel Queen Street (One Street, Many Stories: Queen); and a chronicle about The Body Politic (On The Origins of The Body Politic). He made pioneering contributions to the inventory of gay and lesbian community records for Canada's principal LGBTQ archives, Arquives.

External links

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