Resignation call over sex books

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 21

Resignation call over sex books

PA Wellington A Christchurch bookseller has called on the Secretary for Justice (Mr J. F. Robertson) to resign for allegedly bringing the law into disrespect and usurping parents' rights. Mr Robertson gave the Indecent Publications Tribunal “a bum steer” over the classification of a seeducation book. "Make it Happy,,” according to the Booksellers’ Association’s past president, and secretary of the Freedom to Read organisation, Mr Gordon Tait. The book is legally indecent in the hands of anyone under 18 in New Zealand, yet it recently won the “Times Educational Supplement” Information Award, Mr Tait told Rotarians in Wellington. He said many parents had told him they gave the book to their children, and did not care that it was illegal. Mr Robertson, by submitting the book, had brought the law into disrepute and denied parents’ rights, he said.

More than 7000 parents had bought the book. “Sex education has absolutely nothing in common with poronographv except in the minds of those obsessed by it," Mr Tait said. He defended the tribunal's work, saying it had kepi virtually all pornography out of New Zealand in spite of assertions to the contrary from morals campaigners. “But the tribunal becomes confused when it has to make decisions on sex education books, especially when it is asked to decide on a book which should never have been submitted to it,” Mr Tait said. “The need for Freedom to Read arose because we have a Secretary for Justice who apparently cannot tell the difference between pornography and a sane, decent book on sex education.” Figures on births to young teen-age girls showed the tribunal's decisions had no demonstrable effect on children's morality.