You know, with the internet making actual porn so easy to access, laws against stuff that’s just ‘erotic’ seem pointless. Maybe I’m over-thinking it, but it seems like the same thing as leaving Scotch and Vodka legal, but outlawing wine-coolers because they can make you tipsy.

Maybe it has more to do with the incestuous relationship and less to do with gay erotica. If was me in charge of Canada customs, I’d blocked anything that involves incest. Sorry if it comes off a prudish. I have no qualms with hardcore porn as it involves consenting adults. As if anyone ask, I consider adulthood to be beyond 21.

Cray is right. I used to work for a comic book store with an adult room. And we did get in a lot of gay comic books. Material we routinely had a hard time bringing in was incest, bondage, sexual violence (such as rape) and bestiality.

While the incest might have something to do with it, the border rules are fairly arbitrary. Essentially, anything that depicts underage people having sex or sexualised gets evaluated, and the border agents need to decide if it has ‘Artistic Merit’ (assuming its something which no ACTUAL children were involved in the production of like a drawing or story). This gives them a lot of discretion, and there have been incidents in the past of border agents targetting gay bookstores. (Look up the Little Sisters case in Vancouver for the most well known incident)

Cray, the problem with your hangup with incest is that it’s way too arbitrary. IF the “incest” in question were REAL, that might be problematic. But these are FANTASIES. (Just out of curiosity, I do have to wonder if a comic book adaptation of the story of Oedipus would be held up by Canadian customs. That is, after all, the ULTIMATE in incest stories. You know–killing dad, sleeping with mom, then gouging out your eyes. Granted, Oedipus didn’t KNOW he was committing incest until after the fact, but still…….)
You’re also being a bit absurd with YOUR very arbitrary definition of adulthood as being “beyond 21″. Last time I checked, the laws of the US accept 18 as being “of legal age” (i.e., “adult”). There may be some limitations/restrictions (such as alcohol use–but that itself is a purely arbitrary decision; the “old enough to kill for your country, but not old enough to get drunk” adage comes to mind) but an 18-year old is generally considered responsible enough to provide consent. (In terms of incest, even depicting a parent engaging in sexual contact with a mentally retarded child, even “beyond 21″, would be as disturbing as a 17-year old boy having sex with his 16-year old sister.

Judging from the rest of the article, I think “but still” is applicable: A book en route to the University of Manitoba Medical School that included information on male masturbation was seized by customs agents.

There is a difference however in this situation.

There are adult titles that make it across the border, that are not banned, that are incestuous and adult material. HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY is the story of wives, mothers, daughters sisters, etc, and a good chunk of the stories are all incest.

But because it’s women instead of men, that’s ok.
2 guys, unacceptable.
2 girls, a fantasy by most men.
It’s a double standard but I’ve seen much get stopped that way by Canada Customs. They are not stopping most lesbians product or material. But they will stop the gay material.

It would be nice if things we more liberal here as was commented before.

Maybe someday.

Maybe.

I turn 20 on Monday, and I can already see that I’m more adult than a lot of the people over 21 I come into contact with. That “definition” of adulthood is foolish. I am not a child.

To include all the above, Alan Moore’s Lost Girls has made it past the border. So that makes me really question where the bar is set.

Poster #7 has the important information.

Individual Canada Customs agents have huge discretion here, and some of them have been known to target shipments to gay bookstores.

Works which eroticize incest, pedophilia/pederasty, and degradation are targeted at the border (the theory being that they promote those activities in real life). And I think lesbian titles have been seized in the past. Its possible that if the same titles had been printed and shipped within Canada, no one would have noticed.

Ray,

Lost Girls might have gotten by on the artistic merits argument, or just as likely, no customs agent thought to flip through it because it was bound for a comic shop or regular book store, rather than a store that’s maybe on some agent’s personal or official watch list.

It’s basically the same problem some non-US citizens have coming into the States (or Canada, or wherever). Whether you get in depends a lot on whether you match a profile, and on which agent you get, and you have very little recourse to object to the agent’s decision.