| Description: |
A letter from Debbie Jansen regarding the organization of the 'Stop Police Book Banning' demonstration. A series of events over the period of one year led up to the ensuing demonstration. In the fall of 1979, a woman entered Classics Bookstore intending to purchase The Joy of Cooking and mistakenly picked up The Joy of Gay Sex. She then laid a complaint to the police, who in turn requested that The Joy of Gay Sex be removed from the shelves of all Classics Bookstores under threat of prosecution. Coles was then issued the same request in April of 1980. Key figures implicated in the banning included then Attourney General Gerry Mercier, Crown Counsel Wayne Myshkowsky and the Winnipeg Police Department. These actions were met with disapproval by not only the gay community but by Winnipeg's general population. The demonstration was then organized by Liberation Books to raise the public's awareness of not only the typical questions involved with censorship, but also to recognize that this particular act of censorship undermined the relationship between homosexually oriented persons and the community in general, and that such censorship could ultimately set a precedent for later attacks on civil liberties of other minorities. Eventually the Manitoba Association of Rights and Liberties met with Attourney General Mercier to point out that it should not be the sole responsibility of one individual or groups of individuals to decide what is or is not obscene, and that if police felt that the bookstores were distributing obscene materials they should lay charges so that the court system (the public) could establish whether or not the materials were obscene. Mr. Mercier was persuaded to tell the police to cease advising bookstore owners and instead lay charges. No charges were ever laid. Liberation Books continued to sell The Joy of Gay Sex throughout the ordeal in hopes that the police would charge them so that the censorship issue would go to court. No court proceedings ever occurred in relation to the issue. |
