Sex Party Goes to Court October 15
Our day in court finally arrives. Our legal action against Canada Post for refusing to deliver our federal election flyer is scheduled for a three day hearing in Federal Court in Vancouver.
The case highlights perhaps the most vivid example of institutional sex-negativity in the annals of Canadian bureaucracy.
In brief, Canada Post officials including the president Moya Greene, imposed a policy that forbids unaddressed admail that they consider is in any way “sexually explicit”. They consider words like “penis” or “vagina” explicit. Similarly highly abstract erotic art images are “explicit”.
To these bureaucrats the context of the explicitness is irrelevant; whether the material is tasteful, educational, or political, is insignificant. Sexually explicitness of any sort is absolutely forbidden from their program.
Under Canadian law the only way a government agency can legally prohibit a communication is to prevent harm.
What evidence of harm did Canada Post provide?
It tendered a report of a psychologist that “some” children age 8-12 could get embarrassed or anxious seeing the material.
That’s it! In this mountain of documents, those words are the only that pertain to harm.
But what a bizarre form of harm!
To Canada Post, the fact that an unspecified number of children could get embarrassed or anxious seeing the Sex Party pamphlet, is reason enough to deny everyone else access to the political expression.
This despite the fact that parents have many options to ensure that no junk mail gets into the hands of their children, and that courts have long taken the view that “the government may not reduce the adult population to reading only what is fit for children."
But even more bizarre is that Canada Post insists on delivering material that it knows causes enormous distress to large numbers of people.
The best example of this occurred in the midst of our lawsuit when Canada Post forced the delivery of a rabidly homophobic flyer from a fundamentalist Christian group, over the protests of an entire building of posties who considered the material hate mail.
Canada Post president Greene called the piece “vile” in a speech to the Vancouver Bard of Trade. But she insisted that Canada Post cannot and does not censor unaddressed mail. So Canada Post management delivered it. [See the Youtube video of this portion of her speech - turn on your audio]
So here is the lineup:
Prohibited: a wholesome and taste flyer offering legitimate comment in the middle of election.
Allowed: a hateful flyer attacking a vulnerable minority.
How to make sense of such blatant inconsistency?
The explanation is simple: sex-negativity.
Senior Canada Post decision-makers are in the grip of a primitive out-dated superstition that sees anything sexually open and positive as dangerous and bad. Like all superstitions, this one is not rational or well articulated. It is the result of years of largely unconscious learning from sex-negative parents, religions and other institutions.
Most of us manage to grow out of such attitudes. But for reasons too complex to explore in this report, senior decision makers often fail to. They remain trapped in attitudes that the vast majority of the population have dropped.
Yet they have power. And the result is Orwellian cases like this one, where material openly enthusiastic about sex is seen is worthy of prohibition and worthy of a lengthy court battle costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
And a sex-negative person does not see homophobic material in similar light. Negative statements about a sex positive minority like gays make sense to people who see sex as dangerous. Even really “vile” homophobic material is certainly nothing to prohibit.
There can be no clearer example of socially harmful sex-negativity than that presented here. And no better case for the Sex Party to fight.
If you would like to watch the trial please email us and we will give you information about time and location.
More information:
Our federal election flyer full size image.
Our Notice of Application starting the lawsuit.
Our Affidavit in the lawsuit
Our Memorandum of argument in the lawsuit
Moya Greene video clip denouncing homophobic flyer as "vile" but insisting that it be delivered
For recent media attention on this case, go here.