By Iain Marlow
The publisher of Ottawa’s only gay newspaper, Capital Xtra, has sent a message to Centretown’s homosexual community: “You’re under attack.”
So read the headline of a mass e-mail Gareth Kirkby sent out following a complaint about the paper by an Ottawa resident. The city is now considering a bylaw that could ban Capital Xtra’s distribution on city-owned property.
The man complained to the city after he picked up a copy of Capital Xtra in the Hunt Club-Riverside Community Centre.
He found several of the paper’s advertisements offensive – notably, an escort ad where one man’s face pressed against another man’s leather-encased groin. He wrote to the city that such material should not be available in community centres, where children might see it. River Ward Coun. Maria McRae, whose office handled the complaint, passed the issue on to city staff.
Kirkby and his lawyer have threatened legal action against the city should any ban target Capital Xtra.
“It would be an absolute insult to our readers,” Kirkby says. “We’re not Hustler.
“To treat us like that would be to tarnish our reputation and we would have to seek damages, obviously. To do something like that would say there is something wrong with our paper.”
Martha Jackman, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Ottawa, says she thinks any bylaw would likely be struck down in court as a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Banning the newspaper would be an infringement of freedom of expression. And the courts have recognized that’s not just the freedom of the newspaper to express itself, but the freedom of people to read about what’s in the paper.”
A ban that would target only Capital Xtra would probably be quashed, Jackson says, for making a discriminatory distinction between a gay newspaper and other papers which run similarly graphic, but heterosexually oriented, advertising.
Jackman, who is optimistic the complaints will go nowhere, says: “I hope…this is a municipality that believes in human rights and charter values and that reason will prevail here.”
Aaron Burry, director of parks and recreation, says the city received several other complaints about Capital Xtra and is currently awaiting a legal brief from its lawyers.
“It’s not a simple or straightforward question, that’s why we’re going to be very thorough.”
“What we would be examining is: What is the city’s specific jurisdiction here? What are we actually able to do or not do? What can we consider, what can we not consider? And that work’s largely not finished yet,” he says. “I can’t speak to what may happen in the future.”
In Centretown’s Jack Purcell Community Centre, opinions varied among parents picking up their children from after-school programs.
One man, who declined to be identified, said he was once shocked by the graphic ads of one local newspaper lying open on a city bus.
Asked if it was his responsibility to ensure his daughter did not have access to certain publications, he said: “If it’s in plain view and she can grab it, how can I keep her from doing that?
“If it’s like seven feet off the ground, fine then.”
David Hooton, whose four- and six-year-old children use Jack Purcell almost every day, says other local papers, such as Ottawa Xpress, run ads with explicit sexual content.
“It doesn’t seem fair that one newspaper should be singled out,” Hooton says.
Robert Giacobbi, co-owner of Wilde’s, a gay sex store on Bank Street, says: “I have an eight-year-old kid. If I find something offensive then I’ll steer him away from it. ”
“But I think kids are well educated today, anyways. I think the parents that are bringing them up come from a time when maybe it wasn’t in their face, so they feel like, ‘Oh my God, I have to protect my kids’.”