Putting the squeeze on sleaze: the Ontario experience with lap dance regulations.

• Author: Sophia M. Stadnyk

"Look, but don't touch" has been equally applicable to infants gone visiting and certain forms of adult entertainment. Traditional exotic dancing discouraged contact between the performer and audience, with the popular understanding being that any patron who touched risked being evicted. This changed with the recent advent of lap dancing in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada.

While its exact origins are murky (excessively nearsighted patrons, perhaps), lap dancing, consists of a nude or semi-nude dancer sitting on or straddling a seated patron's lap during the performance. This evolution in ecdysiast entertainment has been censured as promoting prostitution, the spread of sexually transmitted disease (STD), and the decay of morals and family values.

More concretely, it resulted in charges being laid under section 167 of the Criminal Code (allowing or presenting an immoral or obscene performance or entertainment) against the entertainment coordinator and owner of a Toronto tavern. The accused argued that the entertainment did not amount to a public performance or dance since there was no main stage, and the women "merely wiggled and wriggled around". Undercover police officers, however, testified to observing digital penetration, oral sex, and other sexual activity take place during the pulchritudinous polkas.

The criminal charges in R. v. Mara and East were dismissed in 1994 by a Provincial Court judge who ruled that although the performance did indeed amount to a dance, it did not offend community standards of tolerance (based on a 1993 Supreme Court of Canada case) and as such, was not obscene or indecent.

The Mara ruling resulted in an escalation of lap dancing in Toronto-area clubs and bars. Other consequences of such close contact being permitted and encouraged, according to the Metro Toronto City Council, were the increased likelihood of STD transmission and unwanted contact or sexual assaults on dancers. These concerns prompted the Council to enact an amendment to a business licensing bylaw. By prohibiting any contact between "adult entertainment parlour" attendants and patrons, Bylaw 129-95 (August, 1995) in effect banned lap dancing. Other Ontario municipalities followed suit.

The day after its enactment, the Toronto bylaw was challenged by the Ontario Adult Entertainment Bar Association and a...