ChristianWeek

SURREY, BC—Christian businessman Gordon Keast sees little to cheer about in Telus’s decision last month to bow to mounting public pressure and stop offering cellphone customers pay-per-view pornography.

“The fact they changed their mind doesn’t [change the fact] they did what they did,” says Keast, who owns and operates a public relations firm. “They still crossed the line. They still...said, ‘We want a part of the action. We want to be a porn dealer, too.’”

Soon after Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company announced it had become the first in North America to sell pornographic images via cellphones, Keast filed a suit in small claims court accusing Telus of breach of contract.

“When I signed on [with Telus] in November, they didn’t have the direct-sale pornography business,” he says. “So when they started that in January,...those of us who were locked into contracts were thus inadvertently put into a position of underwriting that business.”

At the time, Telus spokesman Jim Johannsson claimed they were simply acknowledging the fact that “adult content” is already available to anyone with a web-enhanced cell phone. “The responsible thing to do is to offer an alternative to consumers that is safe, secure and legal,” he said.

Even though Telus is no longer—in the words of The Globe and Mail—“a purveyor of porn,” Keast is still pursuing legal action. He hopes to persuade Canada’s wireless telecommunications industry to do more to make sure minors cannot access pornography.

But John Sutherland, who teaches business ethics at Trinity Western University in Langley, is convinced that Telus sees this reversal as only a temporary setback. “This is just a first shot, a first foray,” he says. “Telus realized that there was a consumer pushback from it, at least vocal enough to embarrass them. But they made a business decision only. It had nothing to do with any moral qualms.”

The most high-profile protest came from Vancouver Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Roussin, who directed his archdiocese’s more than 130 parishes and schools to essentially boycott Telus. Within days, the porn pay-per-view service was cancelled.

But by then, the outcry from Canadians generally against Telus was gaining considerable momentum. “Their brand took a horrible punishing,” says Keast.

Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary, was preparing to add his voice when Telus gave in. He hopes the attention focused on this issue will become a springboard for mobilizing an all-out campaign against pornography.

“When we look at the proliferation of sexual offences,” he says, “it’s amazing the number of times and the frequency with which pornography is in the background as a significant factor in terms of influencing the mindset and the behaviour of those who perpetrate such crimes. We’ve got to build some fences and boundaries around this whole thing.”

Keast sees no reason why Telus and others could not imitate their European Union counterparts, who have designed a new “framework” to protect children from accessing pornography on their cellphones.

“They’re treating the cellphone as if it were the possession of a minor until an adult can prove otherwise,” he says. “You have to prove you’re [at least] 18....You also have to produce your name and a postal code.”

Yet Sutherland suspects that Canadians’ overall tolerance of porn makes any similar restrictions here unlikely. “There’d have to be a pretty explicit, pretty expansive consumer pushback—societal outrage—for that to happen. I truly hope it does.”

And unless that happens, Sutherland is afraid pornography will one day become just another feature on most cellphones in Canada.

“When they decide the time is right, I have no doubt that Telus and the others will move in that direction, because there’s money in it,” he predicts. “And as long as it wasn’t kiddie porn, I’m sure they’ll...get away with it.”