A gay man is stabbed 146 times. A transsexual is strangled, and her body thrown out the window. A lesbian is kicked, punched, and spat upon in a movie lineup on a busy street in front of dozens of bystanders who watch and do nothing. None of these incidents occurred in a dangerous neighbourhood in a big American city or on the mean streets of a Third World metropolis. These are just some of hundreds of fatal and nonfatal assaults targeting gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual people in easygoing, queer-friendly Vancouver. the first two in 1994, the third just last year. But for some reason, like those people in the movie lineup, we've all been turning the other cheek.

"I want someone to pay for it," 19-year-old Chris Iversen says by phone from his home in New Westminster.

When he was 16, Iversen was attacked by two juveniles while riding the SkyTrain home from a meeting at Youthquest, a support group for queer teens.

"I knew when I saw them that something bad would happen," he says.

Iversen pressed the emergency assistance strip, but when he got off at the next platform, it was empty. His tormenters pursued Iversen, calling him a fag. They smashed his jaw into fragments and dislodged most of his teeth. Iversen, who is presently getting bone grafts, thinks that he may be in and out of surgery for the rest of his life.

Iversen, who identifies himself as bisexual, went to the police. The case was supposed to go to trial, but at the last minute the prosecution dropped charges, citing a "lack of evidence".

Although friends shored him up, he received very little adult support. "My parents are, well, kind of strict and conservative. They were expecting it."

Safe, nonthreatening environments, where he could be himself without worrying how people would react, became very important to Iversen. "I was going to Fraser Valley Christian High School, but after the attack I switched to an alternative school," he says.

But what about safety in public spaces? In light of the 2001 slaying of Aaron Webster in Stanley Park, many people in the gay community feel that law does not necessarily mean justice. The B.C. courts did not designate the murder as a hate crime. Oddly, neither the prosecution nor the defence introduced evidence that Webster was a gay man in a gay cruising area.

How can we end homophobia, and the violence it spawns, if we don't talk about it?

That's a question the Surrey school board ought to ponder. It won't let students at Elgin Park secondary school perform The Laramie Project, a play that thoughtfully analyzes the brutal 1998 killing by two young men of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming. It's based on several hundred hours of taped interviews with the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming, that were recorded in the aftermath of Shepard's murder, juxtaposed with transcripts of the ensuing trials. The Surrey school trustees say it's age-inappropriate, even though there have been hundreds of high-school productions across North America since the play premiered in Denver, Colorado, in 2000 and no reports of people walking out offended. In fact, performances and ensuing discussions have been for the most part very positive. Students participating in a successful 2002 staging at Anacortes High School in the San Juan Islands, for example, apparently viewed the experience as a "gift to the community", according to a local newspaper. The play is used extensively as a tool to teach students about tolerance, and Time magazine even published an on-line classroom primer.

Maybe the Surrey educators underestimate their students, or perhaps they don't understand the play's point, or both. They might get a better idea if they read Pink Blood: Homophobic Violence in Canada (University of Toronto Press). Pink Blood raises the curtain to reveal a dark secret contradicting Canada's reputation for tolerance. On Tuesday (October 11), the day before the seventh anniversary of Shepard's death, the book's Ottawa-based author, Douglas Victor Janoff, will be speaking at several venues in Vancouver. He is also on the board of the Canadian Antiviolence Project.

"When I started working on the book, I was surprised by the number [of violent gay-bashings], the variance in reporting, and lack of in-depth research," Janoff says by phone from Ottawa, where he is a policy and program development manager with Health Canada. "I had to do a lot of digging beneath the surface, and whenever I uncovered one layer, another layer would appear."

Starting with a sobering list of 107 Canadians murdered since 1990 because they were gay, bisexual, or transgendered-or their killers thought that they were-Janoff breaks the silence about the extent and intensity of violent antigay crimes in Canada. He's the first person to put all the information in one place, and the volume of atrocities is overwhelming, partly-and thankfully-because Janoff doesn't soft-pedal. People are beaten with baseball bats, stabbed, strangled, set on fire, sodomized with metal pipes, and so forth.

The book is backed up by nine years of research, resulting in the first-ever compilation of just about all the statistical data and scholarly theories available concerning crimes committed in Canada because of an irrational fear of people who don't conform.

"My point-my theory-is that people who commit homophobic violence are threatened by anyone whom they perceive as violating gender roles, whether you're a leather queen, a cross-dresser, or anything else that contradicts gender scripts."

He's more succinct in his book, where he writes, "Why does queer-bashing occur? In my view, it's a way of keeping us in our place."

Pink Blood also challenges Canadian self-mythologizing. For example, in 1969, when Trudeau said that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation-a mantra of Canadian gay activism-the prime minister was not referring specifically to gays. He was talking about a change in the law that allowed any two adults 21 or over to have sex in private. Gays were actually targeted by the law with increased vigor subsequent to this legislation.

Janoff examines inconsistencies in police procedures and the legal system. When he contacted police departments in every major population centre in Canada, several refused to cooperate.

"It's not a conspiracy," says Janoff. "The police have been unable to meet demands for more sophisticated data analysis because they don't have enough resources."

Homophobia, he points out, makes jury selection difficult. Twenty percent of potential jurors questioned about homosexuality for a related court case in Milton, Ontario, said that they wouldn't be able to view the case fairly. An American survey of more than 1,000 potential jurors revealed that gays and lesbians are three times as likely to face a biased jury as someone who is white, African-American, Hispanic, or Asian.

Janoff decided to write Pink Blood after visiting a Vancouver hospital where a friend who had been severely gay-bashed was recuperating.

"Seeing someone I knew wrapped in bandages like a mummy”¦as a gay activist, I wanted answers. As a journalist, my instincts kicked in. I guess you could say I was compelled."

Stan Engstrum felt similarly compelled. "I'm not political," says the drama teacher at Elgin secondary, a man with 26 years of experience teaching teenagers, by phone from his home. "But how do we educate people if we don't expose issues that need to be talked about."

Last June, as school was winding down for the summer, Engstrum started to think about next semester's pre-Christmas play. He initially considered doing a musical-he says he'd love to do Carousel-but he changed his mind.

"I decided to do The Laramie Project because of something that happened to one of our teachers a few years ago. He arrived at his classroom, and all over the door someone had written, 'Die fag. Jesus burns fags in hell.'?"

The perpetrators turned out to be two of the school's Grade 8 students.

"They thought they were doing the right thing," Engstrum says. "Where do kids learn that it's okay to think that way?"

The Laramie Project, like Pink Blood, seeks to find an answer.

Forty percent of the cases Janoff analyzed involved adolescents. Sixteen percent of the hate-crime designations he studied involved teenagers. Most gay bashers are males in their teens and 20s.

One hundred Elgin Park students showed up to audition for The Laramie Project. All of them had read the play and were eager for a part. Then the axe fell.

"They were devastated," Engstrum says. "Devastated."

So were a lot of parents. It wasn't a student, teacher, or school-board employee that alerted the media; it was a parent, according to Engstrum.

Ironically, a scene in The Laramie Project includes an interview with the head of the drama department at the University of Wyoming, which produced Angels in America-Tony Kushner's powerful Pulitzer-winning play about AIDS and gay identity-to commemorate the first anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death and help Laramie heal.

"We have an obligation to our students," the teacher is quoted in The Laramie Project.

Here is another quote from an unlikely source:

"Every time you are called a fag, or a lez, or a dyke, do you realize that is violence? That is the seed of violence."

These are the words of Father Roger Schmidt, a Catholic priest in a Laramie parish.

Will the Surrey school board recognize its obligation to students? Or will it allow the seeds of violence to continue to germinate? In which case, we can all look forward to the revised edition(s) of Pink Blood.

On Tuesday (October 11), Douglas Victor Janoff will be talking about Pink Blood at: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby campus, Room TC 314N, noon to 2 p.m.; Moot Court Room, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia, 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.; and Gordon Neighbourhood House, 1019 Broughton Street, 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.