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Canadian Border Agents Seize Gay Films

 


CLAPHAM JUNCTION x390 (publicity) | Advocate.com

A trio of movies that were being shipped to a gay film festival in Ottawa were seized by Canadian border guards over the weekend and are being held until they can be screened from start to finish.

Organizers for Inside Out are having to show DVD or lower-quality copies of the films I Can’t Think Straight, Clapham Junction (pictured), and Patrik 1.5 at the festival. The selections are all releases by here! Films, which is owned by the same parent company as The Advocate.

Canadian publication Xtra reports that the Canadian Border Services Agency originally flagged Clapham Junction because it contains some nudity. The agency then seized the other two films because they had been shipped by the same company.

"It seems biased at some times and at other times random," Jason St-Laurent, Inside Out’s programming director, told Xtra. "But to me, this time, it is not a random event.”

This isn’t the first time Canadian authorities have stopped shipments of gay media from crossing the border. For years, border patrol agents and gay bookstores were at odds, with books and magazines delayed by months in arriving in Canada or even shredded.

Vancouver-based bookstore Little Sister's objected and eventually won a partial victory in 2000, when the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged agents were routinely holding material up at the border because of its gay content and ordered them to cease doing so.

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Reader Comments
  • Name: adgepa
    Date posted: 11/24/2009 6:27:25 PM
    Hometown: Brampton, On

    Comment:

    dddavid reread the article, it indicates the name of the film pictured (that's why the word "pictured" was surrounded by parentheses, like these)

  • Name: ArtNOLA
    Date posted: 11/24/2009 9:21:23 AM
    Hometown: New Orleans

    Comment:

    I'm a little confused... Do they not allow gay porn in Canada? I'm not saying that these films are porn, but wondering what they are screening for, unless they consider any nudity at all to be pornographic. Which leads me back to my question about gay porn in Canada. I was also under the impression that Canada was more progressive than this.

  • Name: Laurent
    Date posted: 11/24/2009 8:28:35 AM
    Hometown: Ottawa

    Comment:

    One of our embarassments is our border guards, some of them think they are thre moral judges for the country. They have done this and will get slapped on the hand for ignoring a Supreme Court decision. If they were from Here TV then they are ultra soft porn at best, our standard television shows racier things than Here TV's content. With our current PM and his cabinet they feel they can get away with shit like this. Gay Canadians should be writing their MPs and demanding an explanation for this action, also finally pass what is community standards, as straight porn flows freely in both directions without interference.

  • Name: john in SF
    Date posted: 11/24/2009 7:51:47 AM
    Hometown: San Francisco

    Comment:

    I think that they just wanted some material to jack off to.

  • Name: Mark
    Date posted: 11/24/2009 3:48:22 AM
    Hometown: Tesuque

    Comment:

    Philip, these are American films being sent to Canada.

  • Name: Jeff Gauthier
    Date posted: 11/24/2009 1:41:04 AM
    Hometown: Vancouver

    Comment:

    While this is a horrendous greviance and the boarder guards should and must be censured in the most severe way, Canada is a much better place for this gay man. I am an American who married my Canadian husband nearly six years ago in Vancouver. For six years we have enjoyed every single advantage our straight married counterparts have. We have never been sneared at, or looked at oddly here in Canada. I wish I could say the same for our many trips south of the boarder. My husband and I have often discussed moving to the States, but are at the end of the day unwilling to give up our marriage in a land of mass inopportunity. So while Canada may have some issues to iron out, specifically at the boarder, the country as a whole is decades ahead of my backward country of birth, the good 'ol boys club USA. I am tremendously grateful to Canada.

  • Name: reed
    Date posted: 11/23/2009 11:17:33 PM
    Hometown: Los Angeles

    Comment:

    The border guards were just so turned on by the thought of gay films, they seized them so they could "screen them from start to finish". Does nobody else think that quote is hilarious?!

  • Name: ttt
    Date posted: 11/23/2009 10:38:26 PM
    Hometown: Illinois

    Comment:

    I would expect this kind of crap in this country, but not Canada.

  • Name: Phillip
    Date posted: 11/23/2009 10:37:48 PM
    Hometown: Reseda

    Comment:

    Why do we need Canuck's gay films when we have the best gay film ever made--"Ben And Arthur".

  • Name: dddavid
    Date posted: 11/23/2009 9:44:44 PM
    Hometown: Houston

    Comment:

    Captions please! I hate it when pictures don't have captions, especially when the story doesn't make it clear what the picture is of, but honestly, all pictures should have them.



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