7 NOTES & BOLTS
15 SEX RATED
19 MOVIES
23 MUSIC
26 REYNOLDS RAP
Interview by R. Allen Leider Burt Reynolds speaks about the world
33 FANTASY TAPE
35 SHANNON
Pictorial
She's a real soft touch
44 THE VESCO CONNECTION (Part 1)
Article by Judith & Mark Miller
A heroin bust is smacked down
47 JUDY
Pictorial
She's a real sweetheart
56 NEARL T. AND THE LOVE MACHINE
Fiction by Bob Rimel
He tried to build the perfect woman
59 THE GREAT CANADIAN BEAVER HUNT
Look closely — you may see your neighbor
75 SEXUAL OPINION
Article
That's no lady . . .
79 HOUSEWIFE HOOKERS
83 KIM
Pictorial
A taste of the Orient
93 BEVERLEY BEAVER
PUBLISHER'S STATEMENT
IS LUST A CRIME?
Pride, Lust, Envy, Anger, Covetousness, Gluttony and Sloth: recognize
them? You should. They're the Seven Deadly Sins. Our Bible-up-the-ass
founding fathers and 19th-century lawmakers knew them well. Yet, for
some peculiar reason, they singled one out — Lust — for special
attention and created laws against obscenity. These laws continue to
deprive Canadian readers of the right to read, and Canadian publishers
— like ourselves — of the freedom to give readers what they want,
without fear of police harrassment.
If our legislators had really been as holy and God-fearing as they
pretended, they would have given equal attention to all the Seven
Deadly Sins. Obviously they didn't. And it is this inconsistency that
makes a farce of the old argument that obscenity laws are needed to
protect that highly ambiguous and indefinable something called "Public
Morality."
Now that the Canadian government has decided to review and modernize
our Criminal Code, we want to raise the basic question: Is Lust a crime?
Of course, we have a vested commercial interest, and we don't expect
our opinions — however reasonable — to carry much weight in Ottawa. So
we'd like to let someone else present our case for us. The prominent
American lawyer Charles Rembar, who defended the classic Fanny Hill
before the New York Court of Appeals, wrote the following in his book
The End of Obscenity:
"I reviewed the Seven Deadly Sins. The legislature did not penalize a
restaurant for setting a fine table and thus leading its customers into
Gluttony. Television provided constant seduction to Sloth — especially
among the young — but it was not for that reason criminal. And
certainly the legislature did not seek to prevent men from becoming
rich, though their riches often provoked other men to Envy. We did not
banish biographies that spread success stories before our envious eyes,
nor children's programs nor cookbooks. Why, then, I asked the judges,
should the fact that a book spoke about sex in such a way as to awaken
Lust bring down the law's intervention?
"So as far as books were concerned, the only kind of morality the
legislature seemed to be interested in was sexual morality. If the
comparison seemed ridiculous, it was because the law's exertions —
aimed at one sin alone — were ridiculous."
If Mr. Rembar's arguments seem to have been written with Canadian laws
in mind, it's because both American and Canadian laws have their roots
in English laws dating back to the days when everyone was governed by
the laws of the Church. Unfortunately, here in Canada we seem to have
made less progress than our American cousins in ridding our criminal
laws of the noxious influence of the Church.
What grown people read is their business, and giving them what they
like is our business. We see no crime in that. And as for sin, we'll
gladly take our chances on going to Hell, thank you. Printing costs
can't be any worse there than they are in Canada!
