Liquor Law: Violence OK; Sex not OK

This weekend Vancouver hosted the blood drenched spectacle of mixed martial arts at GM Place. Over 17,000 fans filled the place, many sipping beer.

Five fighters were sent to the hospital.  One had a broken arm. Another had been knocked out.

GM Place, like your average bar, is a licensed premise. What goes on in the ring has to conform to BC liquor laws.

And those laws allow performers to punch each other, to hurt each other, to rub their bodies together and co-mingle blood and sweat, all while the audience drinks booze bought at the venue.

Yet the same laws prohibit performers having any sort of erotic contact.

Even gentle erotic contact like a caress or a kiss. For example, strippers dancing together on a licensed stage cannot legally touch. When the BC registered political party called The Sex Party, tried to stage a fund-raiser in a bar the liquor czars refused a permit because the erotic arts event included a sexual performance by a couple who lived together.

So erotic performance art even for political purposes is totally banned from licensed premises, while an orgy of blood is allowed.

And this bizarre policy is in force not just in BC but throughout Canada and the U.S.

Why?

Because to the average bureaucrat, sex is more frightening than violence. The thought of a small group of wine-sipping sex-positive activists seeing erotic performance art provokes more alarm in the mind of your average liquor czar than 17,000 beer guzzling fans going wild at the site of gore in a ring.

Deep down, the power structure is uncomfortable with sex.

Why such erotophobia? Stay tuned.