As the U.S midterm elections near, AVN thought it would be a good idea to see if our friends Down Under, who have just come off their own federal elections, cared to weigh in with some advice for us on how to confront the forces of censorship and sexual repression that seem to be on the rise in this country, especially from members of the burgeoning Tea Party. So we reached out to the new Australian Sex Party, which fielded several candidates in the election and reported phenomenal success in terms of legitimizing itself as a political force to be reckoned with in the years to come. The following article is by Robbie Swan, Sex Party coordinator, Eros Association media director and the editor of the now-folded but never forgotten Matilda magazine. It originally ran in the October issue of AVN Magazine.
The adult retail industry in Australia formed a national political party just over a year ago to try and fight the increasing conservatism that has been impinging on our industry. This religious conservatism, much of it imported from the U.S. Pentecostal movement, had culminated in a state-based adult retailer being sent to jail earlier this year for selling X-rated films that were legal at a federal level. The last person to be sent to jail in Australia for a censorship offense was in 1947, so this was a clear indication of a change sweeping the nation.
The Australian Sex Party was born to cries of “it’ll never work,” “it’s a terrible name,” “you’ve got the wrong policies,” etc., etc.—much of the criticism coming from within the industry itself. Many people who had spent a lifetime dealing in sex were suddenly embarrassed and gripped by a sort of collective cringe at floating a political party based on sex and using the word to define its existence.
The federal election was held on Aug. 21 for upper and lower houses of parliament. Under Australia’s preferential voting system, you nominate your first preference for a particular member of parliament, but then you have to also nominate who you would like to see as your next best preference if they don’t get in, and then your next one and then your next ... until you’ve nominated everyone from 1 to possibly 50 or 60 in order of preference.
Under this system, the Australian Sex Party came in fourth place for the national Senate vote—the same ranking as a U.S. Pentecostal-style party called Family First, which has been around for over a decade and is bankrolled by a multimillionaire. We came within a few thousand votes of winning a Senate seat in two states. In two other states, our preferences were directly responsible for the election of senators from the Liberal Party and the Greens. In the Crocodile Dundee areas of Australia’s north, the Sex Party polled over 5 percent and received public funding.
For a first-time effort in national politics, it was an outstanding result by all interpretations. Australia’s adult retail sector is now a driving force behind the new ‘major-minor’ party in Australian politics.
The ramifications from this experiment for the U.S. adult retail sector are huge. Australia and the U.S. are very similar both in the position that we occupy in society and the political problems that we face. What this election shows was that the general public would vote for a party that was put together by the nation’s porn industry as long as the policy suite was not narrowly focused on adult entertainment. Our policies included legalized abortion, euthanasia, censorship issues, privacy issues, sex education in schools, gay marriage and adoption, drug law reform, tax breaks for small business and, most important of all, getting religion out of politics.
This latter policy was headed up by a pledge to call a Royal Commission (the highest level federal enquiry) into child sex abuse in the church. Think about it for a minute. What industry in the U.S. is better suited to tackling religion, abortion, sex, drugs and dying than the sex industry? It’s a no-brainer. Especially right now as the Tea Party gathers strength. A movement akin to Australia’s Sex Party is the perfect foil, and only the adult industry has the philosophy, the marketing savvy and the support base to launch it.
Solely running campaigns for high-profile individuals from the adult industry will not do the trick. Success will require forming a proper political party with membership from the community as well as the industry, to provide depth, and an eye on politics that reaches decades into the future. We ran Fiona Patten, president of the Eros Association (equivalent to the FSC), as the lead candidate but then went out and got candidates from the general public as well. We also ran sex workers and adult performers as candidates, and one third were gay, lesbian or transgender. This is an important mix.
The Sex Party ran its entire campaign for less than the annual lunch budget of a medium-sized X-rated film company. The people who ran the campaign did so on wages that most companies would pay their secretaries. Many donated time and services, which indicated an incredible amount of good will toward this movement and recognition that the major parties are not going to tackle these controversial moral issues.
The fact that the Sex Party put its hand up and beat more than 30 other minor parties on its first go shows that its time has come. So, has the time come for the adult industries in all western democracies to tackle the horrors of organized religion and the conservative morality that threatens democracy’s basic freedoms?
