Ian Mulgrew - Vancouver Sun - Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Vancouver sex enthusiasts are joining their Toronto soul-mates to challenge Canada's Victorian-era criminal constraints on consensual adult physical fun.

Led primarily by gay activists tired of being harassed by police, they are calling for a repeal of sections of the Criminal Code they find morally anachronistic.

The crusade was triggered by high-profile police raids on the Montreal strip club Taboo last month, the Calgary gay bathhouse Goliath's last December and the Bijou porn bar in Toronto in 1999.

To emphasize the point locally, an amateur theatrical group will mount June 26 a provocative two-act play called Public Sex, Art, and Democracy that features actors engaging in oral sex.

The producers insist no television station will broadcast this scene, even in a newscast, and no daily newspaper will publish a photo of it for fear of violating the country's repressive sex laws.

"Yet the same media outlets routinely deliver scenes of violence, suffering and death into the homes of the nation," said John Ince, a lawyer and erotic art gallery owner who has long advocated an overhaul of the sex laws.

"Why the media's tolerance for pain and agony but not erotic pleasure? In Canada in the 21st century, reasonable people are still worried that armed men in uniforms might raid an art gallery for displaying nothing more dangerous than love-making. Why? How can a culture be seemingly so intoxicated with sexuality yet be so squeamish about it?"

Written and produced by Ince and Martin Guderna, an artist and instructor at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, the play will be performed by Tanya Seltenrich, Dana Williams, Guderna and Ince. Accompanying the performance will be a show of new erotic art by Guderna entitled, Labyrinth Soixante-Neuf.

The central focus, however, is not the drawings or performance but the question of how far Canada allows artists to go in exploring sexual themes on stage.

The explicit erotic performance, Ince said, will be hot and titillating but will also explore why police, the media and some arts supporters find graphic sexuality so frightening.

"I think the police in Vancouver have a very enlightened attitude towards sex laws," Ince said. "We don't have the problems Toronto or Calgary have. So I don't know whether our performance will trigger a charge under the current law or not. We'll wait and see."

Author of a forthcoming book The Politics of Lust (Pivotal Press) and co-owner of The Art of Loving on West Fifth Avenue, Ince said there is growing awareness the sex laws should be overhauled.

For instance, he said, Brenda Cossman, a director of the self-styled gay and lesbian media group, Pink Triangle Press, is spearheading a national petition, urging Ottawa to act.

The reason is simple: the government and police have no business targeting queer people or any consenting adults playing in private.

In Canada, you can still go to jail for having the wrong kind of sex, doing it in the wrong place, or letting someone watch you do it.

Anal sex remains an unfathomable taboo. In spite of an Ontario court ruling that said this patently anti-gay provision was unconstitutional, it remains on the books.

This nonsense has helped inflame a lunatic debate about kids books in Surrey, a schism in the New Westminster Anglican diocese and the dumb argument over gay marriage.

As one critic said, it's orifice discrimination.

There are other laws equally repugnant. Engage in a threesome and you could be busted.

It's time our sex laws caught up with modernity, especially now the Supreme Court of Canada has weighed in and sanctified gay coupling.

That's not to say the government doesn't have a role policing real sex crimes involving non-consensual behaviour and protecting adults and children. It does.

However, let's repeal and re-write laws such as the following in the Criminal Code of Canada:

l Section 159, which prohibits anal sex with more than two people.

l Section 163, which bans "indecent" exhibitions; Section 167, which prohibits "indecent" theatrical performances and Section 175, which bans exhibiting a disgusting object.

(These sections, I'm informed, are used by some police departments to engage in much mischief: In 1996, they raided the Toronto strip bar Remington's for its Sperm Attack Mondays, where the performers masturbated on stage for the pleasure of an audience.)

l Section 173, which bans indecent acts.

(In 1999, police arrested 19 men at the Bijou porn theatre for indecent sexual acts even though they occurred behind closed doors.)

l And let's get rid of the reference to "indecency" in Section 197, which defines a bawdy house.

These laws cast a criminal drift net over every sexual display: art shows, burlesque, strippers, plays, concerts. In 1990, Toronto the Good used these laws to harass Madonna!

For all its uptight concern about "indecency," the Criminal Code doesn't bother to define it. Until now, the courts have been left to divine some odd-ball community standard but boy, does that differ from sea to sea.

Think denizens of a Halifax trailer park have as broad a view of human physical contact as the boys in Vancouver's West End?

I believe statutes that can be capriciously applied make bad law and bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

The criminal law should be reserved for crimes, not harassing consenting adults whose sexual tastes include more than traditional Judeo-Christian missionary position.

The law should focus on non-consensual sexual activity; the rest of us should be left alone. No uptight judge should be able to impose his (or her) sexual standards on the community.

There is some precedent for a review of the sex laws. The United Kingdom, whose law-makers are responsible for our silly statutes, is overhauling its vice laws.

The bottom line is that former prime minister Pierre Trudeau tried to get the state out of the bedrooms of the nation and failed.

Why should oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, lap dancing, petting one another or exposing yourself to consenting friends in private be a crime?

It's a no brainer. Such laws are no longer appropriate.

Let's grow up.

imulgrew@png.canwest.com
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