Noisemakers 2000: Sultan of swing

Lawyer Robert La Haye says the state has no place in the nation's orgy dens and strip clubs

The happy-looking guy in the square-toed biker boots says he's not an orgy kind of guy. It's just his job to know more about swinging than Tarzan.

"I'm not a swinger," says Robert La Haye, the criminal lawyer who carries Quebec's high-profile swinger cases. "But I feel it's my duty to fight 'til the end, so that these people, who are not doing anybody any harm, can have their lifestyle protected. No law says you can't have sex with more than one person at the same time."

One wall of La Haye's Notre-Dame St. office is covered in laminated pictures, including one of his three smiling blonde daughters--a criminologist, a graphic designer and a journalist. It's from this sunny office that La Haye has earned his reputation as the defender of sexual deviants. Besides representing around 60 swingers, he is also the guy who got lapdancing legalized across Canada.

Your bed and the law

The recent busts of swingers' clubs in Quebec have been sweeping. First police pounced on the Pussy Cat Club in 1988. La Haye lost that case at the provincial level, but won when the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the ruling in 1993. The Orage wife-swapping club was his next high-profile case, which he lost in early 1999 but is currently appealing.

The busts seemed to multiply throughout 1999. In August, police beat down the door of a South Shore Best Western Motel room where unlimited sex was being offered for $100 a night. Then 69 people were arrested in November when cops clamped down on Club Brigitte et Michel in Montreal North. Arrests included the club's owner and his 27-year-old daughter, Brigitte. She was later released, then arrested again (along with a dozen others) when police busted a house orgy a week later.

In several recent busts, cops said they first learned of swingers' clubs from "neighbours' complaints." People living next to clubs were irked by couples fornicating in public--as if swingers are so sex-crazed that they regularly wheelbarrow each other in and koala-carry each other out of swing clubs.

Not true, says La Haye. "No witness has [thus far] taken the stand to testify that he saw something that shocked him."

La Haye says swingers are being unjustly targeted. More specifically, he says cops have it in for swingers. "Police have a tendency to criminalize marginal behaviour. It's not the government. It's the police," says the Karate and Aikibudo black belt.

"Cops are having the same reaction [with swingers] as they had with homosexuals. Gays had to fight for their rights, and now they leave them alone," La Haye says, referring to the police's recent decision to stay away from gay saunas.

La Haye adds that the public doesn't mind people swinging. The only objectionable element, he says, is that money is involved--which, in the eyes of both the public and the law, makes it similar to prostitution. "They think the owner of the place makes lots of money, which is not true. Somebody has to organize and rent the place."

Who swings?

According to La Haye, people from all walks of life get caught with their pants down. La Haye's swinging clients include lawyers, doctors and accountants.

La Haye estimates swingers make up two to five per cent of the population and are usually aged 30 to 55. Often they're just couples that want something "more spicy" after a few years of formulaic bump-'n'-grind. La Haye calls these clubs "soft core."

"Hard core" clubs accommodate many more members at a time. At the Orage, for example, police testified that a woman had sex with four men as dozens of others watched or masturbated.

Quebec and Ontario tie for Swinger Heaven, La Haye says. Each has at least 100 large clubs. In Quebec, half those clubs are in Montreal--meaning a steady stream of clients for him, provided the cops keep up the pace with the busts. Why do Quebecers like swinging almost as much as they like smoking? "Well it's the Latin temperament," La Haye answers quickly.

"Quebecers are more extroverted."

-- CRAIG SEGAL

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