Video

Svend Robinson on being Canada’s first out gay MP

A new biography about Robinson was released last year

By Xtra Editor • January 6, 2014 11:50 am EDT
Svend Robinson talks about his experiences as Canada’s first out member of Parliament.

Seven-term MP Svend Robinson recently spoke to Xtra about the new authorized biography Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics and the challenges of coming out as gay in the late 1980s.

“It was not always easy, I got incredible volumes of hate mail, death threats. The day after the Toronto Star ran a front page story saying that I was going to be coming out . . . my office was destroyed.”

Robinson, who now lives in Switzerland, was in Toronto as a the keynote speaker at Awards for Action, a benefit for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

Read more about Robinson and his new biography here.

Read More About:
Health, Power, Video, Politics, News, HIV/AIDS, Ottawa, Toronto, Canada, Arts, Vancouver

Keep Reading

Xtra Explains

Xtra Explains: Parental rights

What does Canadian law actually say when it comes to the rights of parents and trans kids?
Xtra Explains

Xtra Explains: Social vs. medical transition

Media and politicians like to fixate on the medical aspects of transition. But for most trans youth, social transition plays a much bigger part in their lives
Video

Could Canadian conservatives copy Trump’s anti-trans messaging?

The president-elect’s final ad push—and subsequent election win—may have Canada’s right looking to lean in on anti-trans messaging
Xtra Explains

Xtra Explains: Detransition

In reality, only around three percent of trans people experience some form of regret