Pride Month: Resisting Criminalization and Colonial Violence

While Pride events in Canada are often celebrated throughout the summer, Pride Month is marked in June to recognize two events that occurred in 1969, just a day apart: the enacting of Bill C-150 – the Criminal Law Amendment Act – on June 27, which partially decriminalized homosexuality in Canada under certain conditions, and New York’s Stonewall riots, which occurred the following day after Black and Brown transwomen rose up against ongoing police harassment and brutality, sparking modern 2SLGBTQ+ liberation movements around the world.

These events did not occur in isolation. They emerged within ongoing struggles for liberation against broader colonial systems that have used policing, surveillance, and criminalization to target people whose identities, bodies, relationships or ways of being challenged colonial and social norms. Two-Spirit identities and other diverse genders and sexual orientations within First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities have long been targeted for assimilation. Under Canadian policy and institutions, such as the Indian Act and the Canadian Indian residential school system, Euro-Christian values and heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality were imposed on Indigenous Peoples.

Recent provincial legislation, from the Name Amendment Act of 2024, to proposed laws, such as the Protecting Minors from Gender Transition Act and Human Rights Code Repeal Act, and this year’s policies recriminalizing people who use drugs highlight how certain identities are targeted and criminalized today: Indigenous Peoples, racialized communities, unhoused people, people living with mental health conditions or who use drugs, sex workers, and 2SLGBTQ+ communities.

Every day, BC nurses see the impacts of these inequities within our health-care system shaped by colonialism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and stigma. Pride season reminds us that struggles for liberation are interconnected and that resisting criminalization in all its forms is essential to health equity and social justice. This season, BCNU calls on members to challenge discrimination and advocate for systems rooted in care, cultural safety, and belonging rather than punishment and exclusion.

Support local Pride events in your region this summer.

Visit the BCNU campaign vehicle at the Kamloops Pride Parade on June 14 and the 2SLGBTQ+ caucus table at East Side Pride Festival in Vancouver on June 27.

BCNU Survey: Take the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Nursing Practice Environments survey. Members’ anonymous survey responses will help to strengthen our efforts to create safer and more welcoming workplaces.