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His words got Robin Sharpe into trouble with the law. Gay sex stories he wrote that were seized from his home by Vancouver vice cops in 1996 led to the kiddie-porn charges prosecutors laid against him in 1999. But Sharpe's words also helped get him out of trouble. Defending himself in a case that reached Canada's highest court, Sharpe helped partly knock down a Canadian law that comes close to making thought a crime.

Over nine years, often serving as his own lawyer, the retired Vancouver city planner successfully challenged-- and in the end slightly ameliorated-- one of Canada's harshest sex laws, which can put people in prison for ten years for writing in their diaries, doodling in a notebook, or having the wrong novel on their shelves. Sharpe's victory in British Columbia's highest court, partly sustained by Canada's Supreme Court in 2002, rocked Canadian politics and reverberates still. The case turned Sharpe, now 70, into Canada's most prominent sex radical.

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Last month, a Vancouver jury turned Robin Sharpe into Canada's most prominent sex criminal when it convicted him of having had consensual sex 20 years ago with a then- teenager. (Canada recognizes no statute of limitations on crimes of desire.) Sharpe, once again his own attorney, claimed that the sex they had occurred only after the youth was of age. Prosecutors and the now-35-year-old man asserted otherwise, and then argued that it didn't really matter, because Sharpe was in "a position of authority" for having lent the boy's mother money. With his sentencing set for July, authorities are preparing finally to serve Sharpe his cup of hemlock.

It all began in April 1995 with some marijuana Sharpe unwisely had in his luggage as he passed through US Customs in Seattle on a flight back from Amsterdam. US agents found it, and also noticed some photos showing nude teenagers. Sharpe was let go, but the agents passed the word on to Canada Customs, who declared the nudes "kiddie porn" and seized them. A year-and-a-half later, vice cops raided Sharpe's Vancouver apartment taking 14 boxes of manuscripts, books, and photos.

When the cops came calling, there was plenty for them to find that they could add to the list of charges; more porn writings, pictures, and dope (Sharpe had thought to pay his legal bills for the case by growing marijuana in his apartment). "If stupidity were a capital offense," says Sharpe of his second bust, "I would be dead."

When Canadian parliament rushed to pass a kiddie-porn law in 1993, the Canadian Bar Association had criticized the legislation as overbroad. The law makes no distinctions among photographic depictions, stories, political writing, or paintings. Nor does it distinguish between five-year-olds, youths of 17, or 25-year-olds who merely "look like" teenagers: all are criminal to make, exchange, or possess. But it took Sharpe, a retired city planner to effectively challenge the law.

Sharpe had been published in gay magazines such as Passport and Sodomite Invasion Review, a Canadian literary journal. His poems and novellas are variously crude, witty, sharp-edged, and poignant. They are "written with a knife and an edge of wit," declares Shannon Bell, political science professor at York University in Toronto, "the closest one could get to touching de Sade, Bataille, and Burroughs." Whether his erotic stories start in a prairie farmhouse, a Sultan's harem, or the post- Armageddon wastes, they often settle and linger on the theme of teenage boys getting whipped.

Vancouver sex police had another verdict on Sharpe's oeuvre. "The most horrific material I have had to deal with," Detective Noreen Waters declared-- a critical review that Sharpe today posts prominently on his website (www.robinsharpe.org). Given that Sharpe kept multiple copies of all this vileness, prosecutors added a more serious charge of "intent to distribute."

Unable to find or afford a good lawyer willing to fight the charges, Sharpe made the bold decision to represent himself at trial. He studied the law, other cases, and then formulated his legal strategy. Not only would he argue he wasn't guilty, he would argue the law making possession of child pornography illegal was itself unconstitutional and should be struck down.

Then shocking was result was that, in 1999, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Duncan Shaw struck down the Canadian kiddie-porn law's possession provisions. What people keep in their homes is "an expression of that person's essential self," Justice Duncan Shaw declared in his decision. "His or her books, diaries, pictures, clothes, and other personal things are intertwined with the person's beliefs, opinions, thoughts, and conscience."

Shaw's decision provoked a huge outcry. Parliament threatened to overturn the ruling by fiat, and anti-porn crusaders collected 300,000 signatures.

In January 2001, Canada's highest court, under extraordinary pressure, mostly reversed Shaw's ruling on possession-- though they ruled that it was not illegal for an individual to produce kiddie porn-- i.e., write a diary entry about themselves having sex as a 16-year- old-- so long as he didn't show it to anybody. As for the question of whether Sharpe's writings were illegal, the high court threw the matter back to British Columbia courts to decide whether they had "artistic merit," a defense under the Canadian kiddie-porn law.

In March 2002, Justice Shaw acquitted Sharpe on two, most serious, charges of possessing pornographic stories with the intention to distribute-- the stories did not "advocate or counsel" illegal activity, and had artistic merit, and so were doubly protected under the Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he ruled. (Sharpe promptly published some of them online at www.robinsharpe.org.) For possessing illegal pictures, Shaw gave Sharpe a slap on the wrist-- four months of home detention between 4pm and 8am. And that was a slap in the face to Vancouver Vice, which had obsessively pursued the case.

At the end of August, just before his sentence was up, the crown laid new charges. The evidence for the crime? The very same photos the Vancouver vice cops had held in their possession since 1996, pictures on which they had launched their initial prosecution. The cops wanted to use these photos as evidence that Sharpe was having sex with one particular teenage model.

The only trouble was-- despite years of intense publicity-- they didn't have a complainant. Without a "victim" the case couldn't proceed. So Vancouver Vice put out a press release-- disseminated nationally-- urging the young man who Sharpe had photographed two decades before to come forward with an accusation.

And talk to the cops he did-- in an interview the police videotaped, Sharpe says the man talks fondly about their friendship. He also says that more than 20 years ago, when a few years shy of the age-of-consent, he engaged in mutual masturbation with Sharpe and got blow-jobs. Whether the youth was of legal age was the point in dispute at the trial this March. The crown charged Sharpe under a 1971 law of "indecent assault of a male" and "gross indecency"-- under the terms of which Sharpe faces up to 10 years in prison.

In response to the Sharpe case, Canada's parliament has passed bill C-12 to change the kiddie-porn law to ax the "artistic merit" defense for stories and pictures depicting youth sexuality, and to allow for the prosecution of writers (or their readers) if fictional characters appear to be violating Canadian sex statutes. The law further broadens the kiddie-porn statute to cover all writing "the dominant character of which is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of 18 years."

In dictatorships and totalitarian regimes, writers and artists know they're in trouble if the reigning powers decide, after the fact, that a photograph, painting, essay, or story does not-- the phrase might be-- "serve the public good." And that's precisely the standard that bill C-12 proposes, in lieu of artistic merit, for the legality of any discussion or depiction-- real or imaginary-- of child and adolescent sexuality.

The proposed law directly threatens probably thousands of Canadians who perhaps own a copy of 100 Days of Sodom or a tape of Bertolucci's 1900, but its provisions are pointed directly at Sharpe. As author of bawdy, sadistic, scatological, politically razor-edge stories, Sharpe is one part Aristophanes, the scaldingly satiric Greek satiric playwright. As alleged corrupter of youth, questioner of sacred truths, and nettler of moralistic officialdom, he's one part Socrates. Now that Canada gets set to likely send its most notorious sex gadfly in prison, it's worth considering some of the writings that are the authorities' real reason for putting him there.

J.D. Wannabe
Recollections of a misspent youth

When I was a kid I used to admire the boys who got into trouble. The bad boys were really something. I really wanted to get into trouble too but I was scared, and a sissy to boot. Like they'd have money, lots of money sometimes, and I'd only just got my allowance raised to a buck a week. The bad kids had all sorts of neat things, like radios and dirty books, rings and neat shoes. They were always going somewhere and doing interesting things. And the stories they told-- I believed all of them. Actually I only heard a few because the kids who were always getting into trouble figured I was a real asshole. But it wasn't just because I was a sissy, some them were too, but because... Well, what really bothered me was that they did mean things, like stealing, and stupid things like getting caught, and I was such a good boy. I didn't like the idea of hurting people, like I'd had things stolen from me. I was just a juvenile delinquent wannabe. Unfortunately I didn't know about status offenses at the time. I could have been truant, unmanageable, or promiscuous. Now that might have been a lot of fun without hurting anybody.

Timothy and the Terrorist

Excerpt from one of Sharpe's prosecuted stories in which "Young, innocent white boys sold as sex slaves to a sadistic and murderous sultan plot their own freedom and overthrow a corrupt and hated regime in the process."

Timothy trembling in a confusion of anger, hate and fear examines his welts. They're not serious, no cuts, no blood and the pain is subsiding.

"What's this all about? Who is that, that weirdo?"

"Your master, he likes to decorate new boys."

"But who is he?"

Old Tom smiles knowingly. "It is not to your advantage to know yet. But it is time for you to start learning and training for your new life. First you must always remember to respect and please your master whoever he is. You must never refuse your master, it could mean a whipping that would maim you, or even your life. Come here and lie across my lap.... That's right. You must understand what your master wants and how to satisfy him. I will show you.... Your asshole here, this is your prize possession, your organ of survival. Your master will want to fuck it, fuck you, fuck you repeatedly again and again, and he may become rough and violent in his passion. You must prepare and train your asshole. Your lovely pink asshole and, mmmm I see, still tight little sphincter are going to be subjected to a lot of abuse, as they say. How much it hurts, and whether you get injured or torn, and I know that really hurts, is mainly up to you. The easier you can let Master enter, and the quicker you can bring him off, the better it is for you....

Now, I've got some grease on my finger, and as I push it in I want you to try to alternately tighten and relax your ring muscle.... That's it, that's the trick, but you'll learn to do much better. Now, you feel my finger moving around? feel it reaching up by the base of your spine? and around and down here, this? that's your tiny prostrate gland. If you were older, you'd squirt semen when I squeeze it like this.... Now just relax, concentrate on the sensation as I slide my finger in and out. If you can get to like or even tolerate that sensation, life will be much more pleasant.... More grease.... Now this time I want you to wiggle your hips up and down as I shove my finger in so you're doing half the work.... Good boy, good boy, now make your movements more rhythmical, like you're dancing, maybe a slow hula." The lesson continues for some time.

They hear a guard unlocking the double set of steel doors and two new men enter the gloomy corridor dragging a bound and gagged blond boy a bit taller and older than Timothy.

Old Tom looks up, "Two boys in one day is highly unusual, it's more like two a year. I'm sure Master doesn't intend to keep you both."

Again the guard gives the two men money and they leave, but as the boy is struggling he brings him into Tom's room before untying and ungagging him.

"Du verflucher, scheisswichser, mongoloider, Du!" The new boy continues to curse in German.

Old Tom tries to reason with the lad but he keeps on struggling, cursing and kicking. Finally the two of them strip the German boy of his clothes and the guard handcuffs him to a wall and leaves going up the inside stairs. Fairly soon the new boy's anger turns to fear, his fine features become distorted with despair and he seems to be asking questions they don't understand. His lean, tanned, well muscled body gauzed with the finest golden hairs begins to sweat. Tom speaks reassuringly, trying different words but unable to get through. The lad has barely settled down when the hooded master and his two guards come down the stairs....

Opium Wars
A brief history of Canadian drug laws

In the late 19th century, North America addiction to opiates and cocaine was probably higher than at any time since. The addicts for the most part were consumers of patent medicines, very ordinary people who were part of the larger community. These medicines were very effective in relieving the pain and other symptoms of many ailments and left the user feeling pleasantly buzzed. Aside from a few writers, poets and artists there was nothing resembling a drug subculture among white people. The original prohibitions targeted the "narcotics" in medicines and products like Coca-Cola. The law appeared to work as the number of users plummeted with relatively little difficulty for those involved. It was almost as easy as legislating the lead out of gasoline.

It was only later in the early part of the 20th century, when there was a moral panic about "Chinamen" using opium to make sex slaves out of white women, that our present approach to drugs developed. Led by Mackenzie King, who later became Canada's longest-serving prime minister, the Opium Act (which prohibited simple possession-- an unprecedented but largely unrecognized extension of state power) was enacted. The same coalition of feminists and the religious who subsequently successfully lobbied for the prohibition of alcohol and pornography vigorously backed the law. It was another victory for women.

A subsequent panic, promoted by American law enforcement agencies and sensationalist media and also endorsed by the same coalition, goaded Parliament to prohibit add marijuana without once mentioning the "M" word. The prohibition had little immediate effect in Canada where the drug was practically unknown but in the US there was a massive crackdown mainly on poor Mexicans and blacks. In a massive crackdown with tens of thousands jailed and the prosperity the Second World War brought, marijuana usage declined barely surviving among the marginal and poor. It seemed to be a big victory for the forces of rectitude....

Most heroin and cocaine users are not addicts but enjoy the high on weekends or whenever and know better than to advertise their habit. Because they have no rights as users they cannot exercise their voice. They are not able to negotiate as gays have done. They are like johns who while having natural rights as clients to safety and convenience, they cannot represent their own interests in public debate. In both cases the costs of expressing their views could be severe. It's hard to make a case without getting abused one way or another. This is why druggies of all sorts need rights. It is only through conversation with those in the market will we, including the government, be able to resolve and end the absurdity of the state persecuting and degrading its own people and subcultures in some low intensity civil war. Drugs have to be legal in order for related problems to be resolved. The medicalization of the problem implicitly denies the rights of the users who are officially seen as consumers of therapy. Mandatory treatment can be a cruel punishment and with any confidences being potential evidence against you as well as unethical ones. Ethics is often the first casualty of zero tolerance. Sometimes I wonder if those facing mandatory treatment should be allowed to choose a flogging as a more honorable alternative. Until the government starts treating drug users and retailers, prostitutes, and johns, and others as people with rights they can express without fear, and valid interests to defend, there will be no peace.

No Shit
Defecation gets better & better

When I was just a little kid hanging out at the corner store I can remember listening to old men talking about their shits. It's true, they're always talking about their shits, and I'd hear them boast about particularly good ones though they usually didn't give all that many details. And you know what? They said they got better as you got older. Every time I saw a pensioner I used to wonder about it, but then it was all pretty remote and soon I had the trials of puberty to deal with. Now 50 odd years later I can vouch for its truth, and you know something, shits are particularly good when you're stoned. It's best to have a big meal several hours earlier, I like lots of corn for body and texture, and then you should hold off until you feel you can't wait much longer, but don't over do it, and remember a passive attitude towards the bowels, enhances the rush. Don't grunt and try to force things. Just let it happen. At first I thought it might be some sort of trade off for declining prowess but it seems you can have both worlds for a while.

I should search the Internet to find out what we're called. There must be millions of us and at least a handful of newsgroups. I bet we've even got our own porn. I wonder what it's like? We're not coprophiliacs or whatever, because we don't like to smear it, smell it or eat it. Personally, I would rank Thomas Crapper ahead of Marconi or Mother Theresa. Like we just get off on the shitting sensation, it feels so great, and leaves your anus glowing for up to half an hour after. It's more fun than politics and what you see on TV. When you start pushing 70 you don't really care whether you used to be hetero or homo or even which sex you are. You Know where things are at. The curious thing is that hardly anybody under 60 has the slightest idea what we're talking about. I think we should keep it that way. We want to keep them working and paying taxes for our pensions. Just think if they really knew. In their impatience they might miss out on some of the real delights of being in their fifties and even their forties. And then when they're about to lament their loss of prowess a second puberty pounces on them. What a nice surprise! And the thrills of the new sensations give us something really worth talking about. But it's all right for little kids to listen in and believe the stories.

Surfing Dangers
Not all young swimmers drown

There's a popular assumption that bizarre and obscene material is harmful to children. In typical articles like, "Do you know where your kids are surfing?" and " How parents can police the Net" that appeared in the local Vancouver press, concern is expressed about the "safety" of young people and advice is given on how to spy on your kids and control what they see on the Internet. Controlling is equated with caring. But aren't censorship programs like Net Nanny and Surf Watch an affront to kids' dignity and don't they indicate a lack of trust, not a surfeit of caring. Much of what parents worry about kids may come across anyway. Do parents know what's out there anyway? Do they know what they are afraid of? And why? And should they know, if only to better guide their children? Or are parents better off not knowing? People can feel truth about things they fear better in ignorance. But if it's better to know than not, to know without needing to imagine any details, then what evidence is there that adults would be any better than adolescents in assessing it. Adults do not learn as omnivorously as young people and they are much more ready to classify things.

The important question is not what information kids may encounter which may not be easy to control but how they encounter and deal with it which can be. Probably the best way for a child or adolescent to encounter problematic material is on their own. Books are an excellent source although they need to be acquired and possibly hidden on occasion. The privacy and anonymity of the Internet is ideal for discovering things on one's own. He or she can read and view material and get into it on the basis of their preexisting understanding of the world and free from the pressures and expectations of peers, parents and authorities. The Net, unlike peers or formal instruction, allows kids to chose the pace at which they acquire information. They can explore and then retreat with a click of the mouse if something freaks them out or their parents are coming. Kids need to guard their privacy and be able to keep secrets. Keeping secrets from parents and authorities is a big step towards autonomy. The parent in the article offers advice on how spy on your teens to control the information they may find on the Internet. It's all for the protection of children who are not considered morally or ethically competent to experience certain information.

But what about the children? Let us say a 12-year-old boy comes across a site where a guy is holding his balls in his hand and extolling the joys of self castration, or maybe one with a donkey mounting a woman. If he's gotten that far he's probably already read a disclaimer, claimed to be over 18 and selected categories. He has made decisions and has at least a vague idea of what to expect. Is viewing it going to have any significance beyond his telling his friends about the real gross stuff he's seen. There are also a number of things that parents, churches and schools find difficult to discuss outside of official propaganda or are ignorant about but which kids should learn about.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com