High-profile gay activist minister charged with sexually abusing boy in 1970s
Canada ’s most celebrated homosexual activist minister has been charged for allegedly sexually abusing a boy in the mid-1970s. Rev. Brent Hawkes , 65, of the Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto , has been charged with indecent assault on a male and gross indecency. He was summoned to court in Kentville, Nova Scotia yesterday to face the charges. Local police have refused to provide further details. Hawkes, who lives with his male "husband," has become a major icon of homosexual activism in Canada. He famously flouted Canadian law by illegally "marrying" a homosexual couple in his Toronto church in 2001. When the Canadian government would not recognize it, he took the government to court. Subsequently, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice recognized the "marriage" as legal, beginning a process of judicial activism that eventually culminated in the legalization of homosexual "marriage" by Canada’s Parliament in 2005. For