Clive Boutilier
Clive Boutilier was born in Nova Scotia and migrated to the United States in 1955. He lived in Brooklyn with his partner, Eugene O’Rourke, and worked as a building maintenance man and a care worker for a mentally ill man.
Boutilier is best known for his role in Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a 1967 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. He applied for citizenship in 1963 and admitted that he had been arrested on sodomy charges in New York City in 1959, as well as revealing other details about his same-sex sexual history in Canada and the United States. While the charges had been dropped because the complainant, likely a willing sexual partner, refused to appear in court, the INS sought an assessment of his case file by the U.S. Public Health Service and then determined that Boutilier not only should not be granted citizenship, but should be deported under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. The Act, part of a long tradition of legal statues meant to exclude disabled people from immigrating, included language about the exclusion and deportation of immigrants who were “afflicted with psychotic personality.” At the time, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by many medical authorities.
Boutilier challenged the INS decision. To support his defense, he saw two psychiatrists who submitted testimony that he was not a psychopath. The Homosexual Law Reform Society, based in Philadelphia, submitted a expert brief denying that homosexuality was psychopathological. His case was also covered extensively in the gay and lesbian press, including in Cases in Review, the Daughters of Bilitis New York Newsletter, Drum, The Homosexual Citizen, the Janus Society Newsletter, the Mattachine Midwest Newsletter, and the Pride Newsletter. Coverage of the case in these periodicals, along with mainstream coverage and legal analysis, is available in the OutHistory exhibit Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service (1967), by Marc Stein.
Boutilier was hit by a car or truck in New York City shortly before his case was decided by the Supreme Court, which some members of his family interpreted as a suicide attempt. He sustained traumatic head injuries and was briefly in a coma.
Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold Boutilier’s deportation. His deportation was delayed due to his injuries, but he was nevertheless deported on November 10, 1968. The car accident led to lifelong disability. He lived with his mother, who served as his caretaker, in Nova Scotia and then Ontario, afterwards moved to a group home for disabled people in Ontario. He died on April 12, 2003.