the center for humane sexual culture

Unless you just read an article about Stephen Colbert running for President, I’ll bet politics weren’t the first, second, or third thing you though of when you read the subject of this article. Perhaps to your disappointment, I’ll be writing today about the Sex Party in Canada, not an orgy.

The Sex Party is in the news lately because of a pamphlet the Canada Post refused to deliver.

The Sex Party is a relatively new sex-positive Canadian political party devoted to fighting and counteracting negativity regarding sex.

I looked up their wikipedia entry… oops! I mean, I looked up Sex Party, British Columbia’s wikipedia entry, just to be sure there wasn’t any NAMBLAesqe controvery brewing, but it appears that there is thankfully not. They are truly fighting to make sex something that is not viewed negatively.

In Sex Party’s response to the refusal by Canada Post to deliver their pamphlet and the resulting legal arguments struck me as very relevant to this blog:

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!

In the current, unfortunate, state of affairs, sexual imagery of that sort would be likely to cause “harm” to most of the adult population of the United States!

The most bizarre aspect of this story is that these are not hardcore pornographic images; quite the contrary, actually. These aren’t quite at the level of anatomy textbook, but they’re just about as titillating.

This just follows the logic that has become that status quo: not only should children (and adults) be protected from “sexually explicit images” (whatever that means), they must also be protected from anything that even acknowledges sex in any meaningful way.