During a recent lunch in downtown Toronto, an active supporter of Kathleen Wynne’s campaign to become leader of the Ontario Liberals — and the province’s next premier — raised a question few people dare to ask: Is Ontario is ready to elect an openly gay premier?

It’s an important question because both Wynne and Glen Murray are openly gay politicians seeking to replace Dalton McGuinty as leader of the Liberals.

The winner immediately becomes Ontario’s premier.

It’s “the elephant in the room” that no one wants to discuss, the Wynne activist told me. “We know being a gay politician is an issue for some voters, we just don’t know how many. We call it the silent issue.”

Both Wynne and Murray are solid candidates for the leadership. Wynne, who like Murray resigned as a cabinet minister to enter the race, revealed she was a lesbian in 1990. Murray became Canada’s first openly gay mayor when he was elected in Winnipeg in 1998. He was re-elected mayor in 2002 and moved to Toronto in 2004.

Clearly, Ontario has changed dramatically in the past 25 years. Openly gay politicians have been elected at the federal, provincial and municipal levels.

But there’s never been an openly gay premier in Canadian history and only one openly gay leader of a party with seats in Parliament or a provincial legislature. The lone exception was André Boisclair, who headed the Parti Québécois from late 2005 to May 2007.

While obviously not a top-of-mind issue in the leadership race, the fact that organizers for both Wynne and Murray are concerned is a sign they are aware of its potential to affect the outcome in this contest and in the next general election, expected as early as May.

Across the country, acceptance of gay politicians is fairly strong. A survey in May of this year by the Environics Institute found 66 per cent of Ontarians strongly approved of gays running for public office, a figure virtually unchanged since a similar survey in 2006.

Still, some 20 per cent of Ontario residents surveyed opposed gays running for elected office. Among evangelical Christians, barely one-third supported gays in politics.

“To wish away the possibility that it (an openly gay candidate) would not influence even a small number of voters is just silly,” says David Rayside, a University of Toronto political scientist who for years has studied attitudes toward gay and lesbian politicians in Canada and abroad.

Rayside said it’s wrong to assume homophobia is no longer an issue in Ontario. He said it remains a controversial topic in strongly conservative religious groups and some recent immigrant communities.

Peter Graefe, a political scientist at McMaster University who studies Ontario politics, says the issue of an openly gay leader could play a bigger role in Toronto in the next election than in small towns and rural areas, which he believes may already be lost for the Liberals.

Religious and ethnic communities that traditionally have been uncomfortable with gays and lesbians are often centred in bigger cities and could result in Liberal losses in tightly fought urban ridings if Wynne or Murray heads the party.

Graefe pointed to the 2010 Toronto mayoral race, where he suggested certain elements of the core Liberal support could not fathom a gay mayor.

In that contest, George Smitherman, the gay former Liberal cabinet minister, lost to Rob Ford. In the last stages of the race, several anti-gay anti-Smitherman ads were aimed at various ethnic and religious communities.

In an interview this week, Smitherman said he was subjected to a lot of homophobia during the race, particularly in Chinese and Bangladeshi communities. Also, many of his volunteers faced anti-gay comments as they campaigned door-to-door throughout the city.

In the current Liberal contest, Smitherman, who is backing Gerard Kennedy, said the issue is muted, adding, “I don’t see very much room for that” within the party.

But he predicted there would be “a definite organized effort” in the general election to use the sexual orientation of either Wynne or Murray to rally some voters against them. In individual ridings, that could prove the tipping point between victory and defeat.

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Ultimately, most Ontario voters are ready for a gay premier, as I believe they should be. At the edges, though, the issue remains a significant topic, one that could make a difference in the final outcome.

As political scientist David Rayside notes: “To say it would not have any influence is stupid.”

Bob Hepburn’s column appears Thursday. bhepburn@thestar.ca

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