“The group claim there would be little noise or disturbance from the sex clubs.“Any possible nuisance factor to the surrounding community would be non-existent if enhanced activity were allowed to occur,” the clubs said.“The surrounding community would see a status-quo or business as usual from the exterior.”Most club owners claim the bordellos will help protect vulnerable women as they earn extra income and upgrade their clubs.Club owner Simo Rudan said dancers already have a safe environment to work.“We provide safety for the dancers,” Rudan said. Up until the Supreme Court intervened in 2014, a place like Steamworks was, in the eyes of the law, a bawdy house. There is the Oasis Aqualounge, which also markets itself to heterosexuals. The public saw through police attempts to pass off the raids as a mere anti-prostitution sting, and recognized it for what it really was: an assault on the nascent organized gay community. The Parlour Game: a behind-the-scenes tour of Toronto’s thriving rub ’n’ tug industry City Editor’s Letter (February 2013): public sex, massage parlours and bawdy houses

The emphasis on cruising and on fucking was the ultimate queer shibboleth. Like many of the other brothels in the country, the FKK World was originally built and established for American tourists. Back then, the force had the Morality Bureau, an entire unit dedicated to upholding the city’s puritanical mores. “Customers who want a little extra can now go to the brothel.”Another dancer named Julia hopes to make more money as the business becomes a “one-stop sex shop.”“I am only doing this for the money and I hope I can earn more,” Julia says.Toronto Police Const. Some nights there is a DJ: wearing only a pair of briefs, he spins deep, throbbing house music from a booth at centre of Steamworks’ maze of hallways. I'm confused, is prostitution in Canada legal or not? There was the fellow from Niagara who worked in a chicken slaughterhouse; the personal-injury lawyer who was smoking meth; the hormonal 18-year-old from rural Ontario who seemed astounded that such a place of casual sex could actually exist. The case is now destined for the Supreme Court of Canada at a date to be set.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Toronto SUN, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.There was an error, please provide a valid email address.A welcome email is on its way. There is a full gym, brightly lit though unused except by the occasional gym bunny looking to get his pump on. Peaches is on the House computer, logged in on the brothel boards. The staff had set out a table laden with breakfast food: yogurt cups, mini-croissants, bananas, and coffee. This bit of legalese was, at the very least, etymologically apt: outside the Criminal Code, the adjective “bawdy” describes the humorously indecent, a manner of dealing with sex in a comical way. But the baths were considered safer. The eighth place on this list is FKK World, which is located in Germany. Nurses will be on site to conduct medical checks on sex workers and there will be security cameras in common areas and emergency alarms in the sex stalls to protect women.Club owners said the prostitutes will undergo training and must pass a police background security check before they’re hired.Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, chairman of the community development and recreation committee, said the city stands to gain millions of dollars in taxes if licensed adult clubs expand into legal brothels.Mammoliti says an enhanced licence will be required by the clubs to feature strippers and hookers.“The adult clubs will be a perfect fit for this activity,” Mammoliti says.“The clubs are already there and some jurisdictions have given them permission to place brothels on their property.”He is back-tracking on a red-light district which he previously supported due to a proposal by MGM to create an Las Vegas-style entertainment complex in Toronto.Mammoliti claims brothels can curb the trafficking of women for the sex trade, clean up the shady massage and sex parlour industry, place health workers in clubs, force pimps out and make it safer for prostitutes and their customers.“This is a very lucrative business and we can earn a lot of money as a city,” Mammoliti says. The push for the sex dens in Toronto has intensified as some advocates call for a downtown red light district. In total, 306 men were arrested and charged that night, making it the largest mass arrest in Canadian history—a record that stood until Almost immediately after the raids, the outcry was such that Chief Ackroyd was forced to issue a terse half-apology. When its new owners acquired the space, which was previously known as the Spa on Maitland, they undertook a $2-million renovation. Undercover officers who scoped out the joint as part of the six-month undercover Operation Soap were probably serviced freely and willingly, but that did not stop then-police chief Jack Ackroyd from authorizing the raids on the basis of antiquated anti-prostitution laws. Far from operating as havens for the closeted or ashamed, bathhouses seem to thrive in places where the gay community has by and large already been liberated. A popular washroom for hooking up in Greenwin Square was similarly monitored and used to entrap men who came looking for sex. Officers sat on the sunny patio and fielded questions from passersby. In my experience, it is indisputably true that “indecent” acts take place in a gay bathhouse—though unlike Ackroyd and the authors of the Criminal Code, I don’t use the word pejoratively.