It is clear that these sex laws are being used to harass people such as myself and Matthew McGowan, bookstores and art galleries, rather than to protect real children from real danger and violence. Instead we see the law being used to justify the shameless loathing and intolerance of the authorities.

Canada Customs and the Morality Squad have long demonstrated their blunt ignorance and irresponsibility in the application of these laws at our borders and in our streets, in our workplaces and our homes.

Eli Langer, "Untitled," pencil drawing, 8.5X11.

These gun-toting thugs for hire, underqualified to act as the moral guardians of our culture and society, and armed with vague laws which allow police to use their so-called common sense to decide the difference between art and pornography, legal and illegal, harmless and harmful.

I'm deeply offended by this shameful, disgusting game I've been forced to play over my artwork. It must be acknowledged that the state is committing both a profound personal violation and a significant historical-cultural offence.

-- Eli Langer is one of those charged under this law.

Matthew McGowan

The boys in London are being treated like criminals for trying to earn a living as hookers which is their business. Their private lives have been splashed all over the press and all over their communities. But London is not the only place young male prostitutes are being harassed.

Over the past eight months in Toronto, four young males have been arrested and many others have been questioned around a so-called "kiddie porn" ring. The police have got to stop this cruel witch-hunt before they ruin any more young people's lives and reputations. Some questionable tactics were used to gain information from some of these youth. Things like coercion, intimidation, promises of light sentences, offers of bail -- all to get statements so they could prosecute more people. And for what? For having consenting sex.

Sex is not dehumanizing or degrading and most of all sex is not obscene. Sex is natural and intimate, exciting and stimulating but there has been such a taboo on sex for so long that no one really knows their body or how it feels to explore someone else's. We're all so afraid and uncomfortable around the issue of sex, let alone youth sexuality, that we continue to perpetuate these attitudes.

What we're calling for is the repeal of these repressive, homophobic laws, the release of the young men who have been identified by the circulation of still photos made from discarded videos and at the very least an apology to those people who have had their private lives made public by some overzealous cops who have a hard-on for arresting young male hustlers.

-- Matthew McGowan is one of those charged under this law.

Lynne Fernie

Freedom from abuse comes from representation and debate -- it does not and never has come from silence and censorship.

Pro-censorship feminists who believe that laws like the Butler decision and the kid porn laws will keep women and children safe, deliver the very power of speech and action they have fought for from the state into the hands of the state. That is truly perverse.

If pro-censorship feminists had spent one tenth -- one twentieth even -- as much time over the past twenty-odd years listening to and working with sex workers as they have to working with the various arms of the state to censor porn and control representations of sexuality, our sexual culture could have been transformed.

Censorship does not protect youth -- at best, it abandons them to silence and guilt; at worst, it criminalizes them. Censorship does not protect women -- it reinforces the paternal power of the state over our lives. The silencing of speech and debate harms us all -- men, women, children, lesbian, gay, straight, bisexual, undecided and not-practicing-at-the -moment ...

The seizures of pictures and books, the criminal harassment of sex workers, writers and artists maintains the power of the police and the state over our sexuality. The current laws sanction and foster the legal harassment of youth, sex workers, writers and artists. They are abusive and dangerous. We must and will work to repeal them.

-- Lynne Fernie is co-director of the fabulous lesbian film, Forbidden Love, founder of Fireweed, and was, until recently, the editor of Parallelogramme.

Arif Noorani

The Toronto Coalition Against Racism would like to extend its solidarity with the organizers of today's demonstration. TCAR is a coalition of over fifty community-based anti-racist and social justice organizations. We oppose police harassment of our various communities whether we are people of colour, independent artists, street youth, lesbians and gays, women or street workers.

The Butler decision and youth porn law show us some of the dangers of allowing the state to control our images. Giving the state and police the power to decide for us often means that they will use their power on communities with no power -- censoring our bodies, stories and lives.

-- Arif Noorani is a member of the steering committee of Toronto Coalition Against Racism.

Nancy Nicol

In Britain, Prime Minister John Major's "Back to the Basics" Campaign, launched last October, was supposed to end the troubles which racked the Tory government last year, by rolling back the "permissive society."

In the U.S., President Clinton has launched the "two years and out" policy -- that after two years on welfare, recipients will be forced off, and a woman who gets pregnant on welfare will loose her benefits.

The moral sex panic, like Clinton's war on drugs, provides a means by which the government can increase its policing of society, of the working class, of the poor, of street youth who are often on the street in the first place because of unemployment and the economic crisis.

The moral sex panic by promoting the idea that family breakdown, single mothers, gays and lesbians are somehow responsible for the crisis in society provides a scapegoat, in an attempt to cover up the failure of the state to deal with the economic crisis.

When governments pass repressive laws such as this one, they open the door to the moral backlash -- to scapegoating people like artists, gays and lesbians, sex-trade workers, and single mothers.

This demonstration today is more than a symbolic action -- it represents the broadest mobilization in this city against censorship in quite some time. It has brought together anti-racist organizations like Toronto Coalition Against Racism, arts organizations like ANNPAC, the national alliance of artist-run spaces, the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, AIDS activists and sex-trade workers. And we are just beginning. It is clear that we can mobilize a campaign to call for the repeal of this law and to stop the attack on youth which it represents.

-- Nancy Nicol is a member of International Socialists and another one of the people who organized today's event.