Canadian court allows clubs for group sex

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Group sex among consenting adults is
neither prostitution nor a threat to society, the Supreme Court
of Canada ruled on Wednesday as it lifted a ban on so-called
“swingers” clubs.

In a ruling that changes the way Canadian courts determine
what poses a threat to the population, the top court threw out
the conviction of a Montreal man who ran a club where members
could have group sex in a private room behind locked doors.

“Consensual conduct behind code-locked doors can hardly be
supposed to jeopardize a society as vigorous and tolerant as
Canadian society,” said the opinion of the seven-to-two
majority, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

The decision does not affect laws against prostitution
because no money changed hands among the adults having sex.

The court was reviewing an appeal by Jean-Paul Labaye, who
ran the L’Orage (Thunderstorm) club. He had been convicted in
1999 of running a “bawdy house” — defined as a place where
prostitution or acts of public indecency took place.

Labaye, who is still running the club, said he would go
ahead with a new venture with backing from a group of Florida
investors.

“We hope clients will be more calm. This will probably lead
the way to a good future,” he told reporters, saying he was
looking at adding a Jacuzzi and a swimming pool.

Labaye said he had about 2,000 regular clients who paid
around C$20 ($17) a year for a membership card.

Lawyers for Labaye and the owner of another Montreal
swingers’ club argued that consensual sex among groups of
adults behind closed doors was neither indecent or a risk to
society.

The Supreme Court judges agreed.

“Criminal indecency or obscenity must rest on actual harm
or a significant risk of harm to individuals or society. The
Crown failed to establish this essential element of the
offense. (Its) case must therefore fail,” McLachlin wrote.

In indecency cases, Canadian courts have traditionally
probed whether the acts in question “breached the rules of
conduct necessary for the proper functioning of society.” The
Supreme Court ruled that from now on, judges should pay more
attention to whether society would be actively harmed.

This seemed to ensure there could be no repeat of Labaye’s
original conviction for causing “social harm” by allowing
degrading and dehumanizing group sex to take place.

Social conservatives said the ruling could contribute to a
general relaxing of indecency standards.

“The court is essentially saying that fairly public sexual
acts can be tolerated in commercial establishments,” said Janet
Epp Buckingham of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

“We found it a disappointing judgment… You wonder if the
court is an appropriate place for these kinds of decisions to
be taking place because they don’t have broad public hearings
with a lot of public input,” she told Reuters.

The judges said that just because most Canadians might
disapprove of swingers’ clubs, this did not necessarily mean
the establishments were socially dangerous.

“The causal link between images of sexuality and
anti-social behavior cannot be assumed. Attitudes in themselves
are not crimes, however deviant they may be or disgusting they
may appear,” the judges said, noting no one had been pressured
to have sex or had paid for sex in the cases before the court.

“The autonomy and liberty of members of the public was not
affected by unwanted confrontation with the sexual activity in
question,” they said.

($1=$1.17 Canadian)