By Ed Jackson and Stan Persky
Some debates have greater consequences than others. This one began, rather routinely, with the publication of "Men loving boys loving men," the third in a series of articles on consent and youth sexuality. It ended up triggering the transformation of The Body Politic and its relationship to the world around it. The magazine has been transformed from a small tabloid, operating virtually unnoticed in the marginal world of a dying counter-culture, into a minor institution and the major political voice of a visible and acknowledged gay community. In a sense, The Body Politic came of age January 5, 1978. On that date, after a police raid on its offices, criminal charges were laid against Pink Triangle Press and its officers under Section 164 of the Criminal Code for use of the mails to distribute immoral, indecent and scurrilous materials. Suddenly, the magazine found itself fighting for its very survival.
The hoped-for rational discussion of adult-child relationships and of power and consent within such relationships became completely submerged by more pressing concerns. In a political atmosphere charged with Anita Bryant-inspired hysteria, gay people grappled with the implications of a perceived state attack on one of the community's few visible organizations. The urgent issue became one of freedom of the press, the right of a magazine like The Body Politic to discuss topics of importance to its community in a manner most relevant to its readers.
Initially, in the wake of the criminal charges, many people in the gay community reacted with hostility. They blamed TBP for provoking -- perhaps intentionally -- the intervention of the attorney general's pornography squad. They accused TBP of bad timing in publishing the article at such a critical juncture. For others -- and here there was support from many non-gay observers -- the police seizure of large quantities of documents, including the magazine's subscription list, was cause for greater alarm. An unprecedented number of letters to the editor reflected readers' ambivalence -- anger, fear, defiance, pride -- towards the article and the police raid.
By the time the magazine came to trial a year later (January 1979), much of the hostility had been completely turned around. The trial helped to expand the ranks of TBP supporters. It put The Body Politic in the public's mind as a recognizable -- if somewhat notorious -- name. It also pushed the gay community into the kind of intense media spotlight it had not experienced before that date. The trial, sensational enough by itself, was given a further boost of publicity by the appearance of the then newly-elected mayor of Toronto, John Sewell, at a rally in support of TBP. In language so unequivocal that it set Christian fundamentalists raging, he defended the legitimacy of the gay community and The Body Politic's role within it.
The discussion of adult-child relationships in the pages of TBP stopped dead until the magazine's acquittal in February 1979. The editorial collective immediately reprinted the "Men loving boys loving men" article, accompanied by a long analysis of the major criticisms that had been levelled against it. Discussion died again. Not until late 1981 did another article on the topic finally appear. The nagging weight of a prolonged court case had had its effect: it put a chill on the collective's desire to encourage further exploration of the issue. Only with the passage of time has it been possible to chip away at this self-censoring caution.
Although TBP was acquitted in a legal decision noteworthy for its sanity and common sense, victory was to be short-lived. The Crown appealed the decision and a County Court judge ordered a new trial. Subsequent legal appeals by TBP failed to overturn the retrial order. Four and a half years (and sixty-seven thousand dollars in legal and related costs) later, TBP found itself back at square one: a new trial and a second acquittal in June 1982. The debate around the merits of the original article and the important sexual political issues that it raised continue to be as relevant today as they were in 1977. Highlights from that debate follow.
Preamble to Men Loving Boys Loving Men