Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

I WAS in a medical clinic the
other day, waiting to see a
doctor, when I noticed there
were three prints of old
paintings on the walls that I
was suddenly seeing in 2 new

light.

They reminded me of the irony
— the futility — of all forms of
censorship.

T had been reading about the trial
of Toronto artist Eli Langer whose
works have been seized on the
grounds they amounted to child
pornography.

Behavioral experts had testified
that the paintings would fuel the
fantasies of child molesters and
help them rationalize their
deviance.

Langer’s stuff is being kept in a
court vault while a judge ponders
whether they constitute a violation
of Criminal Code amendments
passed last year concerning depic-
tions of persons under the age of
18.

Yet the three pictures hanging
framed at the family medical clinic
where I was sitting showed stark
naked children, in one case with a
leering old artist looking out at two

ro

litle boys from behind his easel.

Both the boys are crying. The
artist is siniling.

Let me get this right. The kids
are being tumiliated. The old man
is having fun. Odd theme, isn't it?
Especially with all these mothers
and kids crowded in here also wait-
ing to see the doctor.

Is this some kind of program-
ming going on to prepare the kids
for abuse by a physician?

As for what effect this stuff
would have on a child molester's
fantasies, | imagine it would tickle
him pink.

Of course, this particular picture
is a famous masterpiece that I
remember sceing as a child.

I recall thinking that 1 could
understand why those two little
boys were crying. Who wouldn't,
having to take off all your clothes
and pose for an old pervert?

Why hadn't the thought police
swooped on the medica! clinic, as it
did the art gallery where Langer's
paintings were showing? Should 1
call 9-1-1 and report?

The old troublemaker in me felt
tempted, just to annoy the bureau-
crats on the morality squad. I mean
if you're going to bust one artist
over his taste in subject matter,
shouldn't you be busting all the
others who display the same pruri-
ent interests?

It seems unreal that as we come
up on the middle of the 1990s,
artists are still subject to witch-
hunts in Canada. It’s a long, slow
road to artistic freedom, isn’t it?

When are governments going to
quit trying to stifle free speech?

I suppose if the Little Sister’s
Book and Art Emporium has its
way, it just might happen sooner
rather than later, Or at least we'll
take another step in that direction.

in a constitutional challenge in
the B.C. Supreme Court by Little
Sisters against Canada Customs’
authority to detain and ban books,
author Pierre Berton testified, when
asked how long it would take for a
reasonable person to determine that

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Left to right:
Nancy Farran,
Gordon Brown,
Janet Kelchen

arti

a book titled Gay /deas was harm.
less: “ht would take a reasonable
person about five minutes, bul fora
Canada Customs agent it would
take an hour.”

Little Sisters wants the court to
strike down a section of the Canada
Customs Act that allows “prior
restraint,” the technicality which
gives Customs agents their excuse
to pick on gay and lesbian book-
stores,

Customs should keep its hands
off books that cross the border,
lawyers for Little Sisters and the
B.C. Civil Liberties Association
argue.

¥f there is to be prosecution on
grounds of obscenity, it should be
initiated by prosecutors, not goons.

In the normal course of events, it
is highly unlikely | would ever get
around to veading books like The
Lesbian S/M Safety Manual ot
Macho Sluts by Pat Califia, or John
Preston’s Once | Had A Master, or,
for that matter, Jane Rule's The
Young in One Another's Arms, Not
my thing, eh?

Nevertheless, the right of those
authors to write and be published is
so fundamental toe democracy that it
takes my breath away every time |
hear of another scizure of books or
magazines by Canada Customs.

Of course you're going to get all
the weirdo, even sicko stuff along
with the brilliant, revolutionary
ideas, but the point is you can't
interfere with one without setting
dangerous precedents for interfer-
ing with the other.

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Sunday, October 30, 1994 —

Stic tre

However, there's another agenda
at work when it comes to gay und
lesbian material.

It can’t be obscenity itself that
the book-burners are upset about,
because obscenity per se is essen-
tially no longer itlegal anywhere in
the industrialized, which is to say
modern, world.

Henry Miller's musing on
obscenity are still my favorites. As
the writer whose works probably
did more than those of any other
artist in the western world to break
down the walls of censorship, he
knew whereof he wrote: “The liter-
ary artist, having attained under-
standing, communicates that under-

ei

North Shore News ~ 7

standing to his readers.

“That understanding, whether of
sexuai or other matters, is certain to
come into conflict with popular
beliefs, fears and taboos, because
these are, for the most purt, based
on errar.”

But why don't we, for a change,
leave the last word to The Bible?

What better place to look for an
axiomatic pronouncement on what
constitutes good and evil?

And I quote Romans XIV: 14:

“I know and am persuaded by
the Lord Jesus that there is nothing
unctean of itself, but to him that
esteemeth anything to be unclean,
to him it is unclean.”

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