Legal cases
The bookstore was famously the plaintiff in Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v Canada, where it challenged Canada Customs' repeated decisions to block its shipments of erotic literature under customs regulations that bar "obscene materials" as a violation of free expression and equality rights. [3] These materials, nearly all dealing with male-male or female-female sexuality, were routinely seized at the border. The same publications, when destined for mainstream booksellers in the country, had often been delivered without delay or question. [4] Glad Day Bookshop, an LGBT bookstore in Toronto, has faced similar difficulties. [3]
... [A]lternative culture and lifestyles, including manuals and handbooks on safe sex (?!) were proclaimed indecent by someone who has no right to judge them in his/her bias/bigotry, which violates the anti-discrimination protection of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteeing equality of all Canadians. Not to mention that five out of ten provinces (plus one of the two territories) explicitly forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Little Sister's filed their claim against the federal government in 1990 but the case stalled and was not heard by the Supreme Court of British Columbia until October 1994. [5] The court ruled in January 1996 that Little Sister's shipments had been wrongly delayed or withheld due to the "systemic targeting of Little Sisters' importations in the Customs Mail Center" but did not strike down the legislation. The court ruled that banning importation of obscene material, while a violation of section 2 of the Charter, constituted a reasonable limit under section 1 and that there was no violation of the equality rights under section 15. [6] Little Sister's appealed the latter portion of the decision to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which agreed with the lower court.
Little Sister's appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2000. The court agreed with the lower courts that customs authorities had unfairly targeted shipments to the bookstore and that the laws on obscene material were contrary to section 2 of the Charter but saved under section 1. However, the court also ruled that the provisions of the Customs Act which placed the onus on the importer to disprove obscenity were unconstitutional. The case established that a Charter right to import expressive material unless the government proves it is obscene or otherwise illegal. [7]
The bookstore's travails were fictionalized as a subplot of the film Better Than Chocolate . A feature-length documentary film by Aerlyn Weissman, Little Sister's vs. Big Brother (2002), has also been released about the bookstore. [3] Former manager Janine Fuller was also a coauthor with Stuart Blackley of the book Restricted Entry: Censorship on Trial, a non-fiction account of the Little Sister's battle, and wrote an introduction for Forbidden Passages: Writings Banned in Canada , an anthology of excerpts from some of the impounded works which was edited by Patrick Califia. [8] Both books were published in 1995, and were awarded Lammys at the 8th Lambda Literary Awards ceremony in 1996. Additionally, the book What right?: Graphic interpretations against censorship addressed the court case in the form of a graphic novel, with proceed from sales of the book being donated to the Little Sister's Defense fund to assist with legal challenges with Canada Customs. The book features contributions from a number of comic artists including Alison Bechdel and Marc Bell.
Davie Village is a neighbourhood in the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the home of the city's LGBT subculture, and, as such, is often considered a gay village, or gaybourhood. Davie Village is centred on Davie Street and roughly includes the area between Burrard and Jervis streets. Davie Street—and, by extension, the Village—is named in honour of A.E.B. Davie, eighth Premier of British Columbia from 1887 to 1889; A.E.B's brother Theodore was also Premier, from 1892 to 1895.
Egan v Canada, [1995] 2 SCR 513 was one of a trilogy of equality rights cases published by the Supreme Court of Canada in the second quarter of 1995. It stands today as a landmark Supreme Court case which established that sexual orientation constitutes a prohibited basis of discrimination under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
R v Glad Day Bookshops Inc, (2004) is a leading Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision on pornography and homosexuality. The court found that a statutory scheme requiring the approval of the Ontario Film Review Board before films can be distributed or shown in Ontario violated the guarantee of freedom of expression in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Glad Day Bookshop is an independent bookstore and restaurant located in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in LGBT literature. Previously located above a storefront at 598A Yonge Street for much of its history, the store moved to its current location at 499 Church Street, in the heart of the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, in 2016. The store's name and logo are based on a painting by William Blake.
R v Butler, [1992] 1 S.C.R. 452 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on pornography and state censorship. In this case, the Court had to balance the right to freedom of expression under section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms with women's rights. The outcome has been described as a victory for anti-pornography feminism and the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, but a loss for alternative sexualities.
Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v Canada (Minister of Justice) [2000] 2 S.C.R. 1120, 2000 SCC 69 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on freedom of expression and equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was held that the Customs Act, which gave broad powers to customs inspectors to exclude "obscene" materials, violated the right to freedom of expression under section 2 but was justifiable under section 1; however the Customs Act must be read to place the onus of proving obscenity on the state, not the importer.
The BC Book & Yukon Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia and Yukon writers and publishers.
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus, obscaenus, "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage in expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to descriptions and depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity.
Quantity of Books v. Kansas, 378 U.S. 205 (1964), is an in rem United States Supreme Court decision on First Amendment questions relating to the forfeiture of obscene material. By a 7–2 margin, the Court held that a seizure of the books was unconstitutional, since no hearing had been held on whether the books were obscene, and it reversed a Kansas Supreme Court decision that upheld the seizure.
The Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund (CLLDF) is a Canadian nonprofit organization, created in 1987 to protect the free speech rights of comics creators, publishers, retailers, and readers, by helping to cover legal expenses in the defense of cases where its directors feel those issues are at stake.
Joseph James Arvay, was a Canadian lawyer who argued numerous landmark cases involving civil liberties and constitutional rights.
Book Censorship in Canada is primarily limited to the control of which books may be imported. Canada Border Services Agency is able to block materials considered to be inappropriate from entering the country, although this practice has become less frequent since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was put into place.
Aerlyn Weissman is a two-time Genie Award-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker and political activist on behalf of the lesbian community.
Janine Elizabeth Fuller is a Canadian businessperson and writer. She was the manager of Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is best known for her role as an anti-censorship activist in the bookstore's battles with Canada Customs, which culminated in the Supreme Court of Canada case Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Canada in 2004.
Forbidden Passages: Writings Banned in Canada is a compilation book about censorship edited by Patrick Califia with an introduction by Janine Fuller. It was published in 1995 by Cleis Press. Most of the works in the book involve topics relating to LGBTQ and specifically gay and lesbian homosexuality issues.
Meatmen: An Anthology of Gay Male Comics is a series of paperback books collecting short comics featuring gay and bisexual male characters. The comics included a mixture of explicit erotica and humor. Between 1986 and 2004, 26 black-and-white volumes of the series were published by Leyland Publications, making it the longest-running anthology of gay male pornographic comics.
Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436 (1957), was a Supreme Court case that addressed issues of obscenity, free speech, and due process. The case stemmed from the confiscation and destruction of books from a New York City bookstore. The court's determination was that:
A state injunction against distribution of material designated as "obscene" does not violate freedom of speech and press protected by the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Jearld Frederick Moldenhauer was born in Niagara Falls, New York on August 9, 1946. He has been a gay activist from his college years onward, and was the founder of the Cornell Student Homophile League, the University of Toronto Homophile Association (UTHA), and The Body Politic gay liberation journal, Canada's most significant gay periodical. He was a founding member of Toronto Gay Action (TGA), and the Toronto Gay Alliance toward Equality (GATE). On February 13, 1972, he became the first gay liberation representative to address a political party conference in Canada when he addressed a convention of The Waffle, a left-wing faction of the New Democratic Party. In 1973 he began collecting the books, newspapers and ephemera that seeded and grew into the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives. He opened Glad Day Bookshop, the first gay and lesbian bookstore in Canada, in 1970 and operated it until 1991 when he sold the store to John Scythes. In 1979 he opened a second Glad Day Bookshop in Boston, Mass. Glad Day Bookshop Toronto is now considered the oldest gay/lesbian bookshop in the world. Glad Day Bookshop Boston closed its doors in the summer of 2000, when its lease expired and its building was sold.
Librairie L'Androgyne was a gay, lesbian, feminist bookstore in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, active from 1973 to 2002.
