Another video store faces censorship

A second Melbourne store stocking imported gay and lesbian films has been ordered to empty its shelves after being targeted by the federal Attorney-General’s Department.
Rowland Thomson, owner of gay bookshop Hares and Hyenas, received a letter from the department ordering him to remove 10 DVD titles, including television soaps and critically acclaimed documentaries.
“They got the titles from the website,” Thomson said. “Things like Boy Meets Boy; Noah’s Arc; and The Aggressives, a documentary about butch New York lesbians.”
Also on the list was the 1997 film Bent, about the suffering of gay men in Nazi concentration camps, which has also been performed as a stage play in Australia for the last 20 years.
“Could you imagine if books had to be presented for classification? It’s a class thing; film being a more popular medium. We can sell the French Rugby calendar, but we can’t sell the Making Of DVD,” he said.
 “This is a censorship due to minority interests.”
The cost to classify a three-hour film was quoted at $2,500, and came under attack in The Age earlier this week for unfairly hurting minority groups.
OutVideo owner Paul Hollingworth, who last month received a similar order from the department and faces removing more than half his stock, said feedback had been mixed
Adult stores have been able to stock unclassified material by ignoring the department’s warnings, but Hollingworth said that wasn’t the answer.
“Something needs to change; maybe an American-style system of voluntary classification that’s just a parenting advisory,” he said.
“It doesn’t only affect us. A lot of the foreign communities, with maybe only a few thousand people living here, still want to see something from their country.”
A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the department was simply enforcing the law.