PayPal's sex panic comes to Canada

In its continuing crusade against anything that might in any way be connected to s-e-x (shh!), the moralists at PayPal have been dumping business customers left, right and center -- and gosh, by zany coincidence, a whole whack of them have been hawking gay- or lesbian-related products. This week's target is Montrealer Dayna McLeod.

"We appreciate the fact that you chose PayPal to send and receive payments for your transactions," reads an e-mail McLeod received just a few days ago from the Internet payment processing company. (She kindly forwarded me a copy.) "However, after a recent review of your account, it has been determined that you are currently in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. The Policy prohibits the use of PayPal in the sale of obscene or sexually oriented goods or services."

Uhm, McLeod is an artist. And a good one.

This is a big deal; there's very little out there that's as easily accessible as PayPal when it comes to selling your product online. And queer organizations have been screwed over by PayPal repeatedly in the last year or so. The double P has dropped HIM Corp., which runs such news sites as LesbiaNation and GayWired (some personals advertisers allegedly posted full frontal nude shots of themselves). The Washington Blade reported that the Red Hot Organization AIDS fundraising site is no longer a Paypal customer. There's even talk that the September shutdown of GayToday.com was helped along by PayPal's prurience.

A gay book site was disposed of last summer, then reinstated earlier this month: author Perry Brass devoted huge amounts of time to garnering bad publicity for PayPal, which finally paid off. There's nothing like a story in Forbes magazine to embarrass a company.

At first I thought PayPal was run by a bunch of bigots. That was denied last year: "It's not about sexual orientation, it's about sexual content," PayPal communications department officials Amanda Pires and Sara Bettencourt told me during an interview with both on a speakerphone. So now I see that -- joy of joys -- it's not homosexuality they can't cope with. It's anything vaguely connected to The Nasty and The Nudity. Even the straight stuff.

I want to get back to Dayna McLeod. I know Dayna; I enjoy her thoughtful and quite funny work. And yes, there's some sexual content. (Thank gawd -- can't we make fun of sex, too? And have fun with it?)

It's stupid of PayPal to refuse to service porn companies, but hey, it's their financial loss. But to refuse news sites, artists, and authors? To nix an AIDS group because of its safe sex ads? That's truly fucked.

Did I say that getting dumped by PayPal is a big deal? It is, but McLeod gets one laugh out of it. She signed up in September, and hasn't sold a thing through PayPal: "Having... no sales," she asks, "how can they judge the product they are banning if they haven't seen it?"

Still, she needs PayPal. Or something just like it. As does every other queer website with product to sell.


ADDENDUM The Montreal Mirror ran an interview with Dayna McLeod in April.

For grumpy anti PayPal reading, check out Perry Brass's blow by blow account of his fight, located about halfway down the page.

As alternatives to PayPal, you could try Ebill (PC users only) or the shopping cart service with 3-Rivers, a company that deals with Mac users. I haven't tried either, so these aren't recommendations, just possibilities.