AUSTRALIA—In a historic turn of events, the Australian Sex Party—a government-registered political party backed entirely by a country's adult entertainment industry—will contest both Senate and House of Representatives elections. Because national campaigns are very expensive, however, the Party is reaching out to its sister democracy in the Northern Hemisphere, and asking members of the adult entertainment industry in the United States to support its effort to elect Sex Party candidates.
Donations can be made by visiting the Sex Party's donation page on its website by PayPal or direct deposit.
The call for financial help as well as a show of industry unity comes on the heels of last week’s news that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has scheduled an early federal election for Aug. 21. This will be the first time that the Australian Sex Party, which was created in 2008, will field a full slate of candidates, foremost of whom will be Sex Party president Fiona Patten (pictured), who is running for the Senate seat in Victoria.
“The three major parties—Labor, Liberal and Greens—have become so bogged down in debating other important issues like tax, immigration and climate change that they have totally ignored important personal issues like censorship, dying, gender, drugs, abortion and sex abuse,” Patten said Monday during the official kick-off of the Sex Party campaign. “These issues impact people’s lives often much more than broad social or economic ones and we are here to put a voice to the many millions of Australians who feel disenfranchised by the major parties.”
The Sex Party, which claims around 2,000 members, has policies that directly affect the running of the adult and sex industry in Australia but also a wide range of policies that affect moral, sex and gender issues outside of the industry. Censorship, discrimination, abortion, euthanasia, sex education in schools and drug law reform are all on its agenda.
“As a senator,” added Patten, “I will call for an immediate Royal Commission into child sex abuse in all religious institutions and scrap the unworkable Classification Scheme which has led to the largest black market in adult sexual media that Australia has ever seen. I will also work to place abortion into a national health scheme, legalize euthanasia and decriminalize all drugs for personal possession.”
In a letter to AVN sent last week seeking the company’s help in drumming up support for its efforts, the Sex Party underlined the seminal role Australia’s adult industry trade association, the Eros Association, has played in holding the line against the forces of censorship Down Under, and also in the formation of the Australian Sex Party.
“The Sex Party is sponsored by the Eros Association—Australia's adult retail industry association,” said the letter. “Australia is not as relaxed and free thinking as you would believe—especially around the area of sex and censorship. Suppliers of adult products to Australia are only able to trade here because of the work that Eros has done in the past to stop conservative governments from banning large sections of the industry. Eros has single-handedly stopped bans on X-rated films twice over the past 20 years and more recently bans on adult content on line. We also do a lot of work at a local level to make sure that wholesalers and retailers continue to trade and buy imported products, despite police raids and other official censorship.”
Now, the Association and the Party are poised to take their advocacy to a whole other level with the possible election of Fiona Patten to a Senate seat.
“If it happens in one western democracy, it can happen in others and it would offer political agitators within the U.S. adult industry an example of what could be in the U.S. as well,” said the letter. “In this industry more than any other, what goes around comes around. The world is a small place these days and the global adult industry needs to come together and to move forward into the political arena for the good of western democracies which are increasingly being overtaken by religious agendas. The adult industry has a lot to offer people from the 'P' perspective—the 'porno/political' one!”
The Australian Sex Party website is at www.sexparty.org.au.
The Eros Association website is at http://www.eros.org.au/.
