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Canadian lesbian and gay rights movement, litigation which, in turn, translated into concrete
policy gains for lesbian and gay equality rights. The process of movement organizing around
litigation was sparked by the Charter and, in turn, movement organizing amplified the effects
of institutional change on public policy in the subsequent twenty-year time frame.
The evolution of the Canadian lesbian and gay rights movement provides a
particularly striking example of the role played by organized interests and social movement
organizations in the feedback loop between institutional changes in one time period and the
policy effects of such changes in subsequent time periods. At the time of the Charter’s
entrenchment in 1982, the movement was weak and fragmented. After a decade of locally-
based lesbian and gay organizing, little had been gained in terms of human rights protections
(Warner, 2002). Over the twenty-year period following the Charter’s entrenchment, Charter-
based litigation generated lesbian and gay organizing in preexisting organizations such as
trade unions and led to the creation of new advocacy groups and legal networks. Judicial
empowerment sparked the lesbian and gay organizing around the project of Charter
litigation. In turn, lesbian and gay litigation and organizing helped to transform attitudes
towards lesbian and gay citizens in Canadian society and to persuade courts to grant lesbian
and gay rights claims. Prior to the Charter lesbian and gay citizens were hardly recognized in
human rights law; today they enjoy better human rights protection than lesbian and gay
people almost anywhere else in the world.
In the first section of the paper, I explore the role of organized groups in the process
of policy feedback, paying particular attention to the contribution of social movement theory
to understanding the dynamic interaction between institutions, movement politics and policy
outcomes. In the middle sections of the paper, I present the study of the Canadian lesbian
and gay rights movement before and after the Charter, demonstrating how a movement that,
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