By his own account, the intertwining of Calgary academic and political activist Thomas Flanagan with the highly charged issue of child pornography began in the early ’90s when he was on the staff of Preston Manning’s Reform Party. Asked to trace racists who might have infiltrated the party, he subscribed to the Heritage Front newsletter to familiarize himself with such activities.
The newsletter’s mailing list evidently ended up in other hands and Flanagan began getting material from the North American Man Boy Love Association. Flanagan stated in an article appearing in Maclean’s [March 8] that he discarded the stuff, but did not try to get off the mailing list as he thought this would not work.
A decade later, Flanagan was the Conservative Party’s campaign manager in the June 2004 federal election. A high profile sex slaying case ended in a guilty plea and the killer linked his crime to viewing sexually explicit photographs of children. The Conservative Party – legitimately – issued a press release questioning whether the Liberal government was doing enough to combat child pornography. What was not legitimate was the innuendo laden title of the release, suggestively worded, “Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography?”
Conservative leader Stephen Harper quickly ordered that changed. Who came up with the scummy heading, and who approved its release, has never been publicly established. There is no evidence pointing to Flanagan beyond the fact that he was campaign manager, but a captain does not know all going on aboard ship.
Five years later Flanagan was speaking at the University of Manitoba about aboriginal issues. The student newspaper quoted him as saying, “… what’s wrong with child pornography – in the sense that it’s just pictures?” From the article as a whole it is difficult to see what prompted him to bring up something well outside both the general topic and the chain of thought he had been following.
In February of this year the quotation was read out to Flanagan while speaking at the University of Lethbridge, again on aboriginal matters. It was hardly as Flanagan later called it a trap question. The questioner linked asking about what Flanagan had said to the matter of the residential schools – which as is well known included child molestation.
Flanagan not only did not deny his words, he termed the consumption of child pornography a “taste in pictures.” As at Manitoba, there is in what he said at Lethbridge an unsettling minimization of the nature of perusing child pornography. It is not the same as viewing someone’s travel photos – “There’s me on Red Square in front of the Kremlin.”
But then Flanagan put one toe over the line, saying that child pornography aficionados “do not harm another person.” Sexual proclivities, even when illicit, can be notoriously hard to control or cure. There can indeed be valid debate on whether jailing is the best way to deal with child pornography consumers.
But meaningful discussion is impossible with someone who throws a cloak over the basic evil inherent in child pornography. The stuff is not produced by space aliens using skilfully contrived robots. It comes from disgusting exploitation of children where the sole object is adult sexual gratification. It harms the child involved in the photograph or the video. The consumer of child pornography is complicit in that.
Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.
