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Canada Issues Coin Celebrating Anniversary of Decriminalization of Homosexuality

The $1 coin is part of an effort to educate about the country's past and the progress made since.

Canada has announced it will release a new $1 coin this upcoming year to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of the country decriminalizing gay sex.

The Royal Canadian Mint has yet to unveil the new design for the loon, saying it wants to "maximize the impact" when it is officially released. It has also kept the name of the artist under wraps.

However, a newly posted cabinet order describes the design, calling it a "stylized rendering of two overlapping human faces within a large circle, the left half of the left face in front view and the right face in profile facing left, the two faces forming one whole face in front view composed of two eyes with eyebrows, a nose, a mouth and two ears with a small hoop earring on the left ear," the CBC reports.

It also lists the artists initials as R.A., and said it will include the dates 1969 and 2019, and include the word "Equality" in both English and French.

Two different LGBTQ organizations were consulted about the design: Egale Canada and the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity (CCGSD). It was approved by the government on December 14.

Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of the current head of the government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, introduced amendments to the Criminal Code, saying "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized in 2017 on behalf of the nation for its history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and the new coin is part of legislation that went into effect this past June.

Along with a process by which those arrested under the anti-gay sex laws of the past could apply to have the record of the offense removed, a budget of $145 million was also extended to compensate former civil servants whose careers were ended as a result of those convictions, as well as money for historical reconciliation, education, and memorialization efforts.

While the change to the law was welcome, it did not bring full equality, as the age of consent for gay sex was 21, despite the age of consent for heterosexual sex being lower.

"A lot of people were still arrested" even after 1969, noted Cameron Aitken, a spokesperson for CCGSD.

And in 1981, some 300 men were arrested at four gay bathhouses in Toronto, under the "bawdy house" law used to crackdown on brothels in a sting called "Operation Soap." Most of the charges were eventually dropped or dismissed following a backlash that included mass protests against the action, leading to comparisons to the Stonewall Uprising in the United States.

In 2016, Toronto Police chief Mark Saunders apologized for the raids on behalf of the Toronto Police Service.

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