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You can't go the Bijou tonight in Toronto the bar is closed. But when it was open, you had to first turn down a dark alley, go through a side door, head down a set of stairs, and then get past the cashier, to whom you'd fork over a cover charge. As you stepped inside, you would see a AIDS awareness posters, images of gay sex flickering on the bar's video screens, and a clientele that would be hard to mistake for K-mart shoppers.

The Bijou, in other words, was not an establishment that "any unsuspecting tourist could wander into," as a Toronto constable put it, justifying three raids on the bar, starting in late June, and the arrest of 19 men for engaging in "public" sex in the bar's backroom and along what was dubbed its "slurp ramp." Bijou, which billed itself as "Canada's only hard-core porn bar," has closed for the time being to prevent further arrests.

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But what's most newsworthy isn't the raid despite its generally sex-positive ambiance, Toronto has a long history of police actions against gay establishments. More notable is the reaction of a gay paper in town, Fab, which praised the arrests and congratulated the cops.

"I think most rational gay men are pleased that the police are doing their job," wrote Fab's editor John Kennedy. "Should gay men be allowed to have consensual sex on Wilde Oscar's patio?" he added, referencing a popular street-side cafe in Toronto's gay village.

The comparison is "apples and oranges," counters Robert Knight of Spa Excess, a Toronto gay bathhouse. "People entering the Bijou expect privacy. It's not a public bar."

Toronto gay activists have held a series of public forums on the raids, to call attention to them and pressure police from making further arrests, or expanding the scope of the harassment to include saunas.

Ironically, Fab wants a longer leash for Toronto's sex police than the constables want themselves. According to an August 10 report in Canada's National Post, the cops' senior command views the Bijou raid as a "public relations disaster." The paper claims a police superintendent called on Toronto's prosecuting attorney to drop the charges. This prompted denials from Toronto police chief David Boothby that his force makes "secret deals with anyone that would condone criminal behavior." But maybe prosecutors will listen to reason, not the chief, and drop the case. Whatever anyone says, that would be fab. **