Letters

Soft-Headed Thinking

Dear soft-headed letter-writers: public sex doesn't mean fellatio on the curbside of Delaney's. As Ingram spelled out for you, "public" is a legal term that could be defined as "anywhere heteros don't want us to have sex, even in our own bedrooms." The fact that some of us -- just like heteros -- kiss, lick, caress, pet, go down, get down, and gather three or more of us together in the name of Fuck, outside, off the beaten track, in the dark, or when no-one is looking (unless they want to: hey. that's cool too), but only gays and lesbians are going to get harassed or arrested, sucks.

Lyle Jones (Issue 128, Jul 9) equates this making out with "theft dishonesty," blah, blah, "and/or cruelty" because we are all so very grateful not to be in a monogamous relationship, with him, reminds me that the pain spewed by self-righteous rightwing moralizers within our community can only be erased by my next orgy.

On a more technical note, Tom Yeung's otherwise final update on Little Sister's case (The Butler did it, Issue 128, Jul 9) mistakenly credits the (1992) Butler decision with creating the "community standards test," as well as "targetting" child pornography. There was no child porn in evidence in the Butler case -- Butler ran a legal over-the-counter, straight XXX video store; and child pornography was criminalized long before Butler merely upheld that long-standing area of our Criminal Code obscenity legislation.

The "community standards" test has been applied in Canadian obscenity cases since at least 1962, in the Brodie decision, but it is central doctrine of all Commonwealth and American law. The Towne decision in 1985 catches its special appeal to gays and lesbians in our country with the memorable comment: "What matters is not what Canadians think is right for themselves to see. What matters is what Canadians would not abide by othe Canadians seeing..."

Naturally, queer Canadians traditionally fall into the latter category of the "other Canadians," which is why Justice Lance Finch's dissenting opinion about Canada Customs' treatment of our books and magazines is so powerful: "A statutory scheme that imperils the free distribution of morally unimpeachable material cannot be justified by the lame explanation that obscenity was the real target."

Stuart Blackley
Vancouver, BC