The device was never able to establish a "discernable difference," between the biological responses of heterosexuals and LGBT individuals, Gentile wrote in her book. The machine was used by the federal government throughout the 1960s, until the Defence Research Board - which was later folded into the Department of National Defence - pulled funding in 1967. In one test, for example, subjects were shown pictures that would "arouse desire," said Gentile, while cameras took pictures of their pupils, to see if they dilated. The project "was a series of psychological tests," said Patrizia Gentile, an associate professor at Carleton University and the author of The Canadian War on Queers. The government feared they might be easy targets for Soviet spies who could blackmail them into giving up important secrets - and thus commissioned the machine to determine a person's sexual identity through involuntary biological responses.
Gay and lesbian civil servants were driven out of the Canadian military and public service beginning in the 1950s, but the practice continued after homosexuality was removed from the Criminal Code in the 1960s.Īt the time, homosexuals were perceived by the government as weak, unreliable and potentially disloyal. Ottawa faces class-action lawsuit over fired LGBT civil servants.
While the machine is long gone, its legacy is back in the news after the federal government was hit with a class-action lawsuit this week from former public servants who lost their jobs because of their sexual orientation. The so-called "fruit machine" was a homosexuality detection system commissioned by the Canadian government during the Cold War - and developed largely by a psychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa - to keep LGBT people out of the public service or military.
It's not fiction - although it sounds like something straight out of a dystopian novel.