The New Sex Perverts

The fallout is settling. The controversy over the landmark December 22, 2005 Supreme Court of Canada decision democratizing Canadian sex law is beginning to subside. The long-term effect of that decision can now be perceived.

The judges extended to sexual expression (group sex) the same regulatory principle that applies to religious, artistic, academic, or recreation expression: it can be prohibited only if it causes demonstrable harm.

Until the recent ruling the law allowed social majorities to prohibit sexual expression for any reason at all. To gain a conviction police had only to prove that a majority of the community objected.

Outside the sexual domain, democracies had long abandoned that simplistic "community standards" rule to regulate personal expression. That is why a Christian majority that say, hates Jews, can not prohibit a Jewish temple. Or why a majority of sexist men can not shut down a woman's club. Or a majority of homophobes cannot shut down a gay bar. In a democracy, majority dislike of someone's personal expression is not sufficient to prohibit it. Only harm is a valid target of attack. No harm, no prohibition.

But before the swingers case that tolerance principle had never been fully applied in the arena of private and overtly genital conduct. Now sexual expression enjoys the same democratic protections.

Why have mature democracies been much slower to restrain intolerant attacks against racial, religious or gender expression than sexual expression?

The explanation is complex. But the most important reason is that intolerance is restrained only when a critical mass of a culture (usually its academics, journalists and judiciary) come to recognize that irrational attitudes are behind the majority's conduct.

This happened in the American south in the 1950s. A critical mass of American elites perceived that the motives prompting racial segregation were fundamentally irrational. In a few short years, the formal system of racial segregation that had been accepted as normal and natural for centuries, was dismantled. The tables turned on overt racists. Their mental aberration was recognized as such. They become the new outcasts.

In the 1960s and 70s a new type of irrationality came to be recognized: sexism. Courts saw that this prejudice was the foundation for many laws and social practices and struck them down. Overt sexism became déclassé. In the 1990s another prejudice made the list: homophobia. New protections for gays swiftly followed, ultimately including the right to marry.

The prejudice motivating the fear of harmless sexual conduct is called "erotophobia". That word has not yet made it into the national lexicon.

But it is on its way. Awareness is growing that primitive irrational fears motivate attacks on group sex or erotic art or sex toys or sex education or masturbation, in the same way that analogous prejudices are behind racial or gender intolerance.

Now Canada's highest court recognizes that prejudice animates laws against group sex. The tipping point has been reached. The tables have been turned on the sexually intolerant. Their prejudice will in time attract the same stigma as racism, sexism and the like.

The most perceptive sex-negative commentators recognize this. Consider Barbara Kay, columnist for the National Post. Her column titled "Redefining perversion" spots the alarming trend. She understands that the court ruling will ultimately condemn her, and any others intolerant of harmless sexual behavior, as the "new sexual perverts."

Her term is oddly apt. Perversion and sex have long been linked. Perversion now labels not people on the fringe who want to engage in sex, but rather people on the fringe who want to intolerantly repress it.

That is appropriate. For in a democracy intolerance is a perversion. Racists are perverse. Sexists are perverse. Homophobes are perverse. Now erotophobes are getting their due.

A bizarre example of this new perversion is the editorial in the Globe and Mail attacking the Supreme Court decision. The piece is radically out of sync with virtually every editorial on sex and politics in that paper in the last five years. Just a few weeks earlier a Globe editorial rightly attacked corporations that withdrew their ads from homosexual media for "caving in to prejudice" from homophobic groups.

While the Globe recognizes homophobic prejudice, it has yet to discover the erotophobic equivalent. According to the editorial if enough folks believe that group sex is "degrading", the cops should be able to march in. Whether or not the belief in degradation is rational or irrational is irrelevant. Mere majority sentiment must prevail.

There it is. Right under the banner of our oldest national newspaper. Sex-negative intolerance. The new sexual perversion.