Pornography

Pornography Legal Status Canada

Introduction to Pornography

For most of the 20th century, Canadian obscenity law resembled United States law. The Postal Service Act (1875) and the Customs Act (1879) prohibited the transmission and importation of obscenity through the mails, and in an 1892 addition to the criminal code, Parliament provided criminal punishment for the public sale or exposure of any obscene book. Courts interpreted obscenity and indecency along the lines of the 1868 Hicklin case, which criminalized materials tending to “deprave or corrupt.” As in the United States, an antivice movement influenced prosecutions between 1892 and 1920, and a period of liberalization followed between 1920 and 1950.

In the 1950s concern over the rise of pornographic magazines led Canadian authorities to strengthen obscenity laws. Because the Constitution of Canada did not formally protect freedom of expression until 1982, courts did not limit such movements in the name of constitutional principles, as they began to do in the United States. A 1959 law defined material as obscene if the “dominant characteristic” of the material “is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence.” This definition is much more expansive than obscenity doctrine in the United States, which does not include crime, violence, horror, or cruelty.

In the 1960s libertarian movements arose in Canada, as they did in the United States, but Canadian movements were less powerful than those in the United States, and the courts were less accommodating of them. Then, in the 1980s, coalitions of conservatives and feminists began pressuring lawmakers to strengthen obscenity law by outlawing violent and degrading pornography. The 1985 report of the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, also called the Fraser Commission, advocated criminalizing such material, but Parliament did not follow suit. However, courts began incorporating the feminist approach on their own in the mid-1980s.

In the 1985 case R. v. Towne Cinema, the Supreme Court of Canada adopted the view that pornography degrades and dehumanizes women, but it was not until R. v. Butler in 1992 that the Court defined material as obscene if it contains sexual violence, is degrading or dehumanizing, or involves sexual portrayals of children. Canada's child pornography laws are similar to those in the United States, except that Canada also prohibits virtual child pornography.

Canada has protected pornography and obscenity much less than the United States has. Consequently, pornography is less extensively available in Canada than it is in the United States. However, the restrictions on pornography in Canada have not gone unchallenged. Some scholars have charged that the Butler decision has sanctioned prosecutions of bookstores dealing with gay and lesbian themes, as well as other crackdowns.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

Information about Pornography in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Pornography

Law is our Passion

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This entry was last updated: August 24, 2014