Klippert Month – Week 2

It was (Inter) National Coming Out Day this week, which makes it timely to discuss Everett Klippert and his repeated disclosures. Despite homosexuality being a criminal offence in 1960s Canada, and his multiple convictions of gross indecency, he was always frank and truthful in his interactions with the state, even though he paid a severe penalty for that honesty.

Young Everett Klippert (right) in Klippert Family Photo.

When Calgary Police questioned him about the 18 names in his little black book, which was also his dating record, he confessed to having had homosexual relations with them all.

In Pine Point, NWT, local RCMP brought Klippert in for questioning and threatened him with an arson charge of which he was innocent. Using it as leverage to open Klippert up about his sex life, he readily confessed to having had intimate relations with four men there.

In every court case, he pled guilty. A court psychiatrist reported that Klippert told him his “homosexual behaviour had existed since the age of 15; that to him homosexual activity [was] his only satisfactory sexual outlet. He found the thought of heterosexual conduct abhorrent. He told me that he never had heterosexual relations.”

Hand-scribbled judicial annotations in Klippert’s 1960 conviction in Calgary. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta.

Gay activist and lawyer Douglas Saunders interviewed the incarcerated Klippert in December 1967 in what he described as the “fortress-like Penitentiary at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.” His unjust treatment gave his convictions a certain resolve. Klippert told Saunders: “If I meet someone on the outside now and he asks me, I’ll say sure I’m a homosexual, what are you? I’m not going to be ashamed of it anymore.” Klippert who grew up Christian took comfort in his prison bible and noted Psalm 22:24 to Saunders: “For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.”

Coming out cost Klippert much. We can thank his candour for prompting Canada to change its draconian laws around sexual orientation in 1969.

{KA}