1985, London. The wizarding queer art scene revolves around a gallery called the Bent, where conceptual artist Remus Lupin and photographer Sirius Black exhibit their works, and a club called the Bush, where they spend time with Jane and Lily Potter, who work at a nearby heath clinic. Although war with Voldemort was averted, the wizarding world is still simmering with tension. In the face of increasing intolerance and calls for censorship, Remus’ art takes a riskier, more political turn, and he must figure out how to balance self-expression and safety. Also, he might be falling in love with his best friend.
Author's notes on ch. 10:
Part of this chapter deals with legal action being taken against Benjy Fenwick’s porn shop. This was something that really happened in the period, not just with porn shops but queer bookstores more generally. Perhaps the most famous instance of this in Britain was “Operation Tiger.” In 1984, Customs raided Gay’s the Word, a queer bookshop in Bloomsbury founded in 1979. They seized a substantial amount of stock and charged them with importing indecent materials. Graham McKerrow, the co-founder of the London newspaper Capital Gay and a coordinator of the shop’s defense fund, describes what happened next:
“Over the two years following Operation Tiger, Customs detained thousands of volumes of hundreds of queer titles – newspapers, magazines, history, biography, autobiography, politics, sociology, humour, books for young people, health guides, sex guides, counselling guides, books about Aids, contemporary fiction, erotic fiction, drama and poetry – imported mostly from the US and destined for queer, radical and left-wing bookshops, mail order businesses, the Gay Christian Movement and the London International Feminist Book Fair. Customs staff were seizing books and newspapers from the port of Dover on the south coast to Prestwick airport in Scotland. Essentially Gay, a mail order service, was put out of business by Customs’ seizure of its books. None of the other businesses went to court to challenge the seizure notices because they couldn’t afford to, or they had no faith that the courts would give them a fair hearing. Only Gay’s the Word decided it would launch a campaign and ask for donations so it could fight for the right to import books. […]
"When the bookshop declared it would raise the money, go to court and campaign to have Customs’ extensive powers of search and seizure brought into line with police powers, which are supervised by the courts, Customs responded by bringing exactly 100 charges against the nine staff and volunteer directors alleging that they had conspired to import indecent or obscene material, and carrying a penalty of up to life in prison and fines. […]
"The defence campaign hired two co-ordinators, of which I was one, to intensify and expand the campaign but suddenly in June, following a judgment by the European court about the importation of sex dolls and a change of the minister responsible for Customs and Excise, the charges were dropped and 123 titles were returned to Gay’s the Word, and 19 titles that Customs claimed were obscene were sent back to the supplier in the US. Copies of The Joy of Gay Sex were returned to the Gay Christian Movement. None of the books seized from Gay’s the Word was destroyed, no-one was fined or jailed, but there was no compensation either and Customs retains to this day the right to enter any building by force and search and seize any goods liable to forfeiture.”
Here's some more reading on Gay’s the Word:
25th anniversary of the raid on Gay's the Word
Gay's the Word: The little LGBTQ bookstore that refused to be beaten
"Saving Gay’s the Word: the campaign to protect a bookshop and the right to import queer literature" from Queer Between the Covers: Histories of Queer Publishing and Publishing Queer Voices