Queer Bookstores and the Fight against Customs Confiscations: The Glad Day Censorship Fund and the Defend Gay's the Word Campaign

In April 1984, British Customs, in Operation Tiger, raided Gay’s The Word bookshop in London, England, confiscating thousands of imported queer books. The Defend Gay’s The Word Campaign (1984-1985), which successfully challenge the confiscations in court, galvanized donations to the bookshop’s legal fees through mobilizing an international campaign of queer booksellers and activists through receiving support from other prominent queer bookstores, like Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, PA. But Gay’s the Word’s customs battles were not an isolated struggle. Glad Day, located in Toronto, Canada, is the oldest surviving LGBTQ+ bookstore in North America and has faced repeated confiscations of their stock. From 1983 to 2007, the Glad Day Censorship Fund used local and transnational community resources to finance Glad Day’s frequent legal battles over the censorship and impounding of their merchandise - especially books, magazines, and videos - by the Canada Customs who deemed them “obscene materials.” Like Gay’s The Word, Glad Day was part of a transnational network of queer booksellers who shared business knowledge across borders. When Glad Day employee Norman Laurila moved to California in 1979 and opened A Different Light bookstore, the businesses became informally interlinked. Moldenhauer shared stock from a buying trip to Europe with Laurila, while A Different Light encouraged its customers to monetarily support Glad Day in its frequent battles against Canada Customs, even holding fundraising events in their California stores. Drawing on materials from The ArQuives in Toronto, Canada and The Bishopsgate Institute in London, England, Dunne’s presentation demonstrates how Glad Day’s and Gay’s The Word’s attempts to merely import gay and lesbian reading materials galvanized an international campaign against homophobic customs practices and made access to queer books and magazines a prominent political cause in the 1980s.