The Department of Canadian Heritage should cut $23,000 in funding to the Vancouver Queer Film Festival because the films are “degenerate and degrading to humanity”, according to conservative lobby group REAL Women of Canada. In an article posted on Lifesite.net, a Christian-conservative news site, REAL Women vice president Gwen Landolt is quoted: “The films are used as a political statement against established social mores, a way of showing contempt, of saying, ‘We don't have to be held to normal standards of behaviour.'…I think the government is trying to show how wide-open they are to all diversity, but surely there is a limit to tolerance.”

The authors of the August 29 article, John-Henry Westen and Gudrun Schultz, urge readers to write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Heritage Minister Bev Oda asking that the funding end.

Michelle Bruehler, media coordinator for the Out on Screen society (which presents the festival), discovered the piece—which is the top-hit article on-line about the 2006 festival and has been posted to dozens of conservative activist sites—when she was gathering festival coverage for her files.

“At first I laughed. It was really innocent. I just thought, ‘Well, this is something to add to the media file,'” Bruehler told the Georgia Straight. Then, she said, she started to realize the power behind Canada's conservative lobby and Landolt, who is an outspoken lawyer and has addressed the United Nations more than 30 times. “This has become a serious issue.”

Bruehler and OOS's executive director, Drew Dennis, are asking their organization's 3,000-strong membership and other supporters to write to Harper and Oda in support of the festival. They phoned Heritage Canada on September 11, and local program officers assured them that their funding is not in immediate jeopardy.

“Our hope is that the squawking won't have a huge impact, but we don't want to turn a blind eye to it,” Dennis said.

The article, at www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06083101.html, lists what Landolt called “degenerate and degrading” films from August's festival: Deconstructing Crack Ho, Dyke After Dyke, I Cum I, Lesbians on Ecstasy, Post-Porn & New Technologies of Pleasure, and Toilet Sex in Canadian Cinema. Dennis pointed out that these are mostly independent lesbian shorts and don't represent the range of films at the festival. In fact, Dennis and Bruehler said they don't believe Landolt has seen any of the festival's films, so she wouldn't know whether there's “no artistry there”, as she said in the article.

On behalf of Landolt, REAL Women researcher Diane Watts returned a call from the Straight. She said Landolt wouldn't have to see any queer films to know they're unartistic because they are “easy to categorize”, like cowboy films; people either like them or they don't. Canadians, Watts said, are overtaxed to the point where most families have little discretionary income. A queer film fest, she said, should be paid for by those who want to see queer films, not by the general taxpayer.

“We've always objected to the government handing out $1 billion per year to special-interest groups,” she said. “I don't even think the majority of homosexuals would attend that type of festival, because it's too fringe.”

Watts went on to say that REAL Women doesn't support federal funding of any controversial art. As an example of noncontroversial art, Watts suggested the Pierre Auguste Renoir exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. (The 19th-century French court consistently refused to show then-fringy Impressionist paintings, including Renoir's, at the Louvre's Salon d'Apollon.)

The whole situation reminds Heather Redfern, executive director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture, of her days in Edmonton. The conservative Canadian Taxpayers Federation had a radio spot called “This is what they spent your tax dollars on.”

“We had a festival called Loud & Queer, and they went on the same rant,” she told the Straight. “It's just not to be taken seriously.”

Redfern predicted that REAL Women's members will send indignant e-mails to Ottawa and that nothing will change. This is why Canada's arts-funding bodies stay at arm's length from politicians and bureaucrats, she said.

Dennis noted that as long as the festival doesn't lose its funding, the dialogue is appreciated. Next year, Dennis suggested, the festival may invite Landolt to speak in a workshop, an exercise in bridge-building similar to the censorship workshop they organized years ago with the B.C. Film Classification Board.