Books have provided the major vehicle for my academic writing. My first was an ethnographic portrayal of a small town, and my second and third were comparative analyses of sexual diversity politics. I have co-edited a volume of essays on Canadian union response to equity issues, and another entitled Faith, Politics, and Sexual Diversity in Canada and the United States.  I am now co-editing a collection of original articles on conservatism in Canada, and engaged in two research projects.  One is on the relationship between Canadian political parties and faith communities; the other is on Muslim response to sexual diversity in Canada and the United States.

Since my first year at the U of T in 1974, I have taught courses on comparative and Canadian politics. In the last decade, most of my teaching has focussed on the politics of sexual diversity, gender issues, social movements, and religion and politics. I have occupied senior administrative positions in my own department (Political Science) and University College, and have been closely associated with the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies since the launch of its undergraduate program in 1998. I have also served on the governing boards of the Canadian and American Political Science associations.

Prior to 1990, most of my writing dealt with the politics of difference along lines of language, gender, region, and social class.  My work was, and remains, heavily shaped by feminist, class, and weberian analyses of power. Since then, most of my papers, articles, reports, and encyclopedia entries have dealt with the entry of gay-related issues into mainstream political arenas in Canada, the United States, Britain, and to some extent continental Europe, though I am now also writing on the role of religion in mainstream political life.

I began taking up gender issues as an activist in the mid-1970s, mostly on the University of Toronto campus. My gay activism began off campus around 1980, intensified in the next couple of years as a result of police attacks on community institutions, and extended to a broader human rights agenda by mid-decade. From the early 1990s on, most of my activism focussed on academic inclusiveness within and beyond the U of T, and has included the long march associated with building SDS.