Did Canada vote against both Liberals and the Supreme Court of Canada?

Stephen Harper evoked slack-jawed wonderment in Canada's press just prior to this January's election when he opined that our Supreme Court was well stacked with overbearing lefties out to redraw the traditional lines of jurisprudence. Whatever was this dangerous demagogue alluding to, they myopically wondered?

I in turn wonder how many votes went the Conservatives' way owing to the December Supreme Court of Canada ruling that gave the green light to commercially operated "swingers clubs" that provide facilities for members seeking group sex, one-on-one mate swapping, and voyeurism. In a seven to two decision that came just in time to clear the way for any Canadians planning festive orgies over the Christmas holidays, the ruling, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, declared that "personal harm," rather than community standards, should be the operative criterion in defining indecency.

While it is still illegal in Canada to run a brothel or bawdy house where human beings can rent other human beings for sexual pleasure, clubs such as l'Orage and Auberge 102 in Montreal, or the Wicked Club in Toronto, have found a way to dodge that little obstacle. Patrons supposedly pay only for membership in such clubs and if two or several patrons spontaneously decide once they're inside that club that they'd like to have their way with each other in one of these conveniently appointed chambers, then they now are legally free to do so.

So--you either pay to belong to a club where consensual sex can take place if two or more people feel like it, and that's okay; or you pay at the door to get into a place for consensual sex and that's not okay. As sex seems to be the only reason you'd set foot in either joint, and as you won't get past the door in either place without first coughing up some money, the distinction here seems pretty subtle, bordering on invisible.

The Reverend Thomas Dowd, a Roman Catholic priest who lives and ministers in Montreal, where two of these clubs are situated, claims that distinction is a sham. Posting on Mark Shea's website, Catholic and Enjoying It, he wrote, "Really they are houses of prostitution. More men than women show up at these clubs (how surprising) so the club owners pay prostitutes to become part of the club clientele, to keep things, shall we say, entertaining."

It was inevitable that this latest Supreme Court decision would have a coarsening (or should that be Liberalising?) impact on what sorts of behaviour would be allowed in bath-houses, massage parlours, strip clubs, escort services, and other depressing outposts of what we are euphemistically encouraged nowadays to call the "sex industry."

Asked what sort of behaviour he thought might spur a recovery of the concept of community standards and perhaps even a reversal of this decision by the Court, libertarian Osgoode Hall Law School professor, Alan Young, opined to the Globe & Mail, "Something even more fringe, people defecating on one another."

Ah. Somehow it's hard to imagine the bidding wars are particularly fierce among janitorial firms seeking contracts to clean these clubs.

Granted, community standards of decency and indecency, and also of right and wrong, are trickier for many citizens (particularly the unchurched) to discern in the sort of polyglot society Canadians know today. And no small part of the current confusion in some of these matters can be laid at the feet of recent Supreme Court rulings that have helped turn traditional understandings of some pretty fundamental matters upside down. But I really was ... I was going to say "shocked" but perhaps the truer word is "heartsick" ... that the top court of this land couldn't recognise the kind of degrading, soul-shrivelling "harm" that establishments of this kind pose to society at large.

No, it's probably pointless to try to tell moral libertines all jacked up on "free love" and "no inhibitions" how to conduct their creepy sex lives. I was thinking more of young people growing up in a society where places of this kind are allowed to freely operate. What does the unfettered operation of an establishment like the Wicked Club tell a young person about love and honour and fidelity? That they are options and nothing more. That you don't even have to try to uphold standards of decency if you don't feel like it. That sex is something you can buy like a takeout hamburger and eat at the side of the road, alone or in company. You can indulge in whatever sort of suicidal behaviour you're drawn to or tempted by and we won't judge you because this is Canada where tolerance at all costs, regardless of all harm, is the only value we cherish.

I know a lot of social conservatives were less than thrilled by the compromises in long-standing Tory/Reform platforms that helped the Tories finally get elected. But their precarious minority victory could be the beginning of a push back in the proper direction; a push that I have no doubt was partially inspired by just this kind of insanity in the Supreme Court of the land.

Editor: See also George Carruthers, "The December 21, 2005, Labaye ruling, "pp. 11-13.

Herman Goodden is a full-time journalist. He writes from London, ON.