Customs Canada's targeting of Little Sisters' shipments since 1984 is one of the contexts of open repression in which OOB was produced -- a context that may have contributed to its focus on openly transgressive, potentially "irrepressible" content.

Notable to Athabasca community members is Busby's explanation of how a heternormative definition (or lack of definition) of obscenity, coupled with subtly and openly homophobic practices and a lack of accountability, institutionalizes discrimination against queers and threatens the existence of queer culture, which is underrepresented to begin with. The same censorious regime could be, but historically has not been, used to threaten the existence of heterosexual culture. 

Little Sisters bookstore’s inventory includes “gay and lesbian literature, travel information, general interest periodicals, academic studies relating to homosexuality, AIDS/HIV safer sex advisory material and gay and lesbian erotica.  It was not in the nature of an “XXX Adult” store...  It is considered something of a “community centre” for Vancouver’s gay and lesbian population” (Little Sisters, 2000, paragraph 1). This description of the bookstore, written by Mr. Justice Binnie in his Little Sisters (2000) decision, should be contrasted with Dr. Kendall’s (2004, 94) description of the case as one where “the defence of gay male pornography outlined  in  Little Sisters was made  in the context of a court case aimed at ensuring the production and distribution of lesbian and gay male pornography.”    In reducing the case to a simple defence of “pornography,” a term which he does not define but which seems to include most sexually explicit imagery and not just imagery which would be classified as “obscene”, Kendall misses the central reason why CAS, Egale Canada and LEAF intervened in the case:  to defend the constitutional equality and free expression right of queer people to access materials which acknowledge and foster our diverse identities, communities, cultures and sexualities.  He also ignores the threat posed by the Customs regime to the very existence of the Little Sisters bookstore, a vital social institution for the queer community at a time when few bookstores even had a gay and lesbian section.

[…]

Customs officers gave evidence at the Little Sisters trial that finally confirmed what Little  Sisters had suspected all along:  Canada Customs had targeted for routine inspection virtually all shipments to the bookstore since it opened in 1984; shipments to other lesbian and gay bookstores in Toronto and Montreal and from distributors of lesbian and gay publishers also were methodically identified and scrutinized; and “there was no such blanket surveillance of heterosexual erotica even in the case of so-called ‘adult’ bookstores that sold nothing else” (Little Sisters, 2000, paragraph 11).  The evidence at trial also established that the same materials cleared Canada Customs, even if inspected, when destined for general interest bookstores.  The significant delays (months, even years) and damage caused by these inspections as well as the outright refusal to permit many goods into Canada threatened the viability of the Little Sisters bookstore. The absence of mechanisms for public accountability coupled with the denial of basic procedural protections and, as will be discussed, an unclear obscenity law permitted a regime that fostered systemic discrimination against gay men and lesbian women.