This article is about why we can’t read certain books — at least not in this country.
Every year, thousands of imported books and magazines are detained at the border by Canada Customs, whose officers have the power to judge what is and isn’t acceptable reading. This is called “protection” by the government. Most people call it “censorship.”
Customs censorship has a long and embarrassing history in Canada. A partial list of former banned or detained books sounds like a reading list for an eclectic English course: James Joyce’s Ulysses; D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover; William Faulkner’s Sanctuary; John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus; Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exist to Brooklyn; William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch; Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless.
Books about birth control have been stopped at the border; so too has a dictionary of psychological terms, a standard reference book for any PSY100Y student. The reason? They were judged to be “obscene.”
More recently, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses receives a 48-hour ban early last year because some citizens called it “hate literature” — this about a book that was judged by the New York Times to be one of the best books of the year.
But in the past five years, the most frequently banned books have been those with gay and lesbian themes. In March of this year, acclaimed Canadian writer Jane Rule had her novel The Young in One Another’s Arms detained at the border, even though it had been available in Canadian stores for 13 years. And Geoff Mains’ Urban Aboriginals, a non-fiction study of sadomasochism banned and burned in 1987, was banned again this year. Another book, How to be a Happy Homosexual, was detained for a month, presumably because customs thought the title rather suspicious.
Not surprisingly, the hardest hit by the government’s censorship are the bookstores that specialize in gay and lesbian literature, particularly L’Androgyne Bookstore in Montreal, Little Sisters in Vancouver, and Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto. Shipments to these stores are routinely detained, and frequently arrive with damaged merchandise.
Jearld Moldenhauer is the owner of Glad Day, and he is angry but not surprised by the censorship.
“People don’t realize the extent of censorship that goes on,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s an incredibly tight control on artistic freedom and expression, and of course it’s all because of sexuality.”
Moldenhauer, who has been with the store since its inception 20 years ago, blames the recent rash of bannings on the conservative government.
He claims that the trouble began with the government’s proposed Bill C-54, which failed to pass through the House of Commons in the mid-’80s.
“[Bill C-54] would have given Brian Mulroney an enormous censorship package,” said Moldenhauer, “greater than anywhere in the so-called free democratic world. It would have made normal bodily functionings, like mothers breastfeeding babies, obscene.”
Although the bill didn’t get very far, Moldenhauer said “it showed us the workings of Brian Mulroney’s mind.”
Several years ago, Memorandum D9-1-1 was introduced, an interpretive memorandum that prohibits materials “of a treasonable or seditious nature” or “that are deemed to be ‘obscene’ under subsection 159(8) of the Criminal Code.”
Under the Criminal Code, “obscenity” is defined as any material “a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty, and violence.”
Because it was not a piece of legislation, Memorandum D9-1-1 did not have to be voted upon by anyone.
“Since [Mulroney] couldn’t get what he wanted through the front door,” said Moldenhauer, “he used the back door, with a memorandum, which is exactly what Adolf Hitler did. His Final Solution for the Jews in Germany was also in the form of a memorandum.”
Among other things, this memorandum prohibits: (a) “portrayals or descriptions of rape”; (b) “portrayals or descriptions of the act of buggery [sodomy], including depictions or descriptions involving implements of all kinds”; and (c) “portrayals or descriptions of children or juveniles in total or partial undress, alone or in the presence of other persons, and in which the content is even slightly sexually suggestive.”
At a recent fundraiser battling customs censorship, lawyer Clayton Ruby criticized the memo because it pays no attention to an artist’s “point, artistic purpose, perspective, or political point of view.”
“It doesn’t matter if [rape] is a part of a story or a novel,” said Ruby. “That’s not the task of a customs officer.”
Ruby also pointed out section 5 of the memorandum, which ominously states: “Any doubtful material will be forwarded to Headquarters for review and classification.”
The key adjective describing the memorandum, then is “interpretive.” Under the present system, any customs officer can seize and detain a book or magazine that he or she feels fits the government’s criteria.
And so they have.
“Doubtful material” is U.S. magazines is often whited out for Canadian readers. Sometimes entire pages are blank. This procedure was taken to dangerous extremes a few years ago when an advertisement for safe sex guidelines in Blueboy, a gay erotic magazine, was partially whited out by the censors, provoking an editorial in The Globe and Mail and an embarrassed apology by the government. Moldenhauer is cynical about the incident. “Frankly, they wish that [gay men] would all die immediately.”
One of the most notorious seizures came in 1987, when The Joy of Gay Sex, a manual which had been freely available in Canada for ten years, was suddenly banned, presumably because of the inclusion of “anal penetration.”
According to Moldenhauer, the RCMP visited Jack Stoddart, president of the book’s Canadian distributor, General Publishing. They asked him to remove the book from his company’s distribution list, and he complied. This in turn sent a signal to the government: nobody in the publishing industry was going to defend these books because they were, quite simply, gay books.
Nevertheless, Moldenhauer and Glad Day took Canada Customs to court over the decision.
Judge Bruce Hawkins rules that the book was not obscene, saying, “To write about homosexual practices without dealing with anal intercourse would be equivalent to writing a history of music and omitting Mozart.”
The cost of defending The Joy of Gay Sex was $15,000.
Censorship remains a problematic issue. There are many voices of concern.
Alison Kerr, coordinator of Resources Against Pornography (RAP), an organization developed to educate the public about the connection between pornography and violence, thinks that we should work with the government to make sure that certain materials continue to stay out of the country.
“If the Customs Memo dies, we’d be flooded with magazines with titles like Zionism Rules, Sadistic Rage, and Incest with Daddy, says Kerr, referring to actual magazines that have been seized at the border.
“If we don’t have some prior censorship at customs, then this stuff will get into the country and charges will have to be laid. That means citizens will have to make complaints about it, which is a laborious process.”
Still, RAP doesn’t believe in total censorship. They are concerned mostly about the exploitation of women and children. In sympathy with Glad Day, Kerr points out the damaging effects of including the “anal penetration” clause in the Memorandum.
“That should be changed,” she says. “But we can’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”
The issue of customs censorship continues to make headlines. Last month, the Harbourfront Reading Series held a standing room only benefit reading to raise funds for the Canadian Committee Against Customs Censorship (CCACC).
And just last week, Article 19, an independent organization whose function is to monitor censorship around the world (much like Amnesty International), released a report which criticizes Canada’s censorship policies.
In an official statement called “Freedom of Information and Expression in Canada,” the organization, after a long and detailed study, recommended the following:
“[Canada’s] customs laws should be amended to remove the authority of Canada Customs to detain foreign publications pending determination of their obscene nature. The law should be revised to permit detention or confiscation of publications only after they have been judicially determined to be obscene. Pending such a change in the law, the government should take steps to ensure that books imported by certain bookstores, particularly ones that sell predominantly gay and/or lesbian literature, are not singled out for special inspection or action.”
Although one might quibble with the phrase “judicially determined to be obscene,” such a statement might provoke change, or at least embarrassment, in the present government.
To bring attention to Article 19’s criticism, CCACC and Queer Nation are planning a demonstration, tentatively scheduled for December 8.
In the meantime, books continue to be detained and banned. Just last week, Glad Day received a shipment of damaged books. Canada Customs had knifed open a shipment addressed to the store, and after they decided there was nothing they could ban, conveniently forgot to reseal the box before putting it back in the mail sack.
“The books were jumbling around in that bag,” said Moldenhauer stoically, “and they just self-destructed.” The owner of Glad Day Bookshop was appalled but hardly surprised; this was just the latest in a series of such incidents.
