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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watdcsu!dmcanzi
From: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.motss,net.women
Subject: A note to the people of the free world from Canada, about censorship.
Message-ID: <1945@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Dec-85 17:09:08 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1945
Posted: Thu Dec  5 17:09:08 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Dec-85 06:33:29 EST
Reply-To: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Followup-To: net.politics
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 41
Xref: watmath net.politics:12326 net.motss:2314 net.women:8213

The following line was censored from Blueboy magazine (a magazine for
gay men) before it could be allowed to be imported into Canada:

"And he won some scholarship to a fancy-dancy prep school up North
in Massachusetts, where everybody talks like John F. Kennedy, with
no R's in their words and A's that sound like sheep talking."

Before you read on, you might try to imagine *what* was so offensive
about that line...





Give up?  It's "child porn".  Child porn is defined as:

"Materials depicting and/or describing acts between children and/or
juveniles, or between children and/or juveniles and adults...
Children and juveniles are persons actually or apparently under the
age of eighteen."

What makes it child porn is that a gay character is being described as
being of prep-school age.

The fact is there are actively gay men under the age of eighteen.  I've
even met some.  This is the truth, but in Canada, this particular truth
is child pornography.  In Canada, the line has been crossed: the
government is now "protecting" the people from knowing the truth.

This article is based on some experience, but mainly on an article in
the local student newspaper.  That article in turn was based on the
"Censorship Bulletin" published by the Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto.
It's presented as a warning to the world of the danger of any kind
of censorship law, especially a *vague* one.

Any law the government creates can, and eventually will, be used
against the people.  (Followups will go to net.politics only.)
-- 
David Canzi

"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."  -- Henry David Thoreau