So... roughly a decade ago the husband of a "senior Manitoba judge" posted explicit photos of his wife—photos of her nude, in bondage, performing oral sex—on an adult website. The judge was a lawyer in private practice at the time. In 2002 the judge's husband, Jack King, also a lawyer, propositioned a client of his, a black immigrant to Canada who was seeking a divorce at the time. King asked his client if he'd like to sleep with his wife. King showed his client his and his wife's personal ad at website for married white women interested in black men. All of this is coming out now because the client—Alexander Chapman—has filed a complaint against the judge, her husband, and her husband's old law firm. And he plans to sue despite the fact that he already received a settlement:

When his divorce concluded, Chapman said he filed a complaint to the managing partners at Thompson Dorfman Sweatman. Soon after the complaint, King left the firm.... Chapman received a $25,000 cash payment from King in return for promises not to take legal action against King and his partners. As part of the settlement, Chapman said he was required to not speak about the matter and to destroy all emails, photos and other materials sent to him by King. He said he signed, but kept the material.

After seven years of silence, however, Chapman decided to come forward, saying he felt distraught about the matter for a long time and worried it may have influence in civil court cases he's involved in, which is related to the divorce he obtained in 2003. CBC News has seen no evidence of such influence.

I'm not sure what Chapman's motives are—is he after more money? is he paranoid? still distraught about being treated like a sex toy by his lawyer nearly ten years and $25,000 ago?—but I am sure about this: the media and legal establishment are in full on sex-panic mode. Check out this hysterical TV report. And here's the crux of the case against the judge:

An Ottawa legal expert said that even if Douglas, who was appointed a judge in 2005, was the unwitting victim of a scheme [her husband claims that his wife didn't know he posted the pictures online], the presence of the photos on the internet raises issues about her ability to perform as a judge.

"If pictures of you naked end up on an internet site, it's quite difficult to say you have the credibility to be a judge," said SĂ©bastien Grammond, dean of civil law at the University of Ottawa.

And how does having naked pictures of yourself on an internet site undermine your credibility? How does it impact your legal opinions? Because it is evidence of poor judgement—la la la—and displaying poor judgement isn't something that judges are supposed to do outside their legal opinions. The Canadian media is also insisting that the judge—Lori Douglas—should have disclosed all of "this" before her appointment to the bench. Not disclosed the fact her husband may have sexually harassed a client—this is shaping up to be a big he said/he said—but disclosed the existence of the nude photos and personal ads. Because judges—even long before they're judges—aren't allowed to pose for nude photos, be kinky, take out personal ads, or seek extramarital sex partners. Only the vanilla, monogamous, and camera shy are fit to be judges. Because... well, just because.

Which means that, gee, in about twenty years Canada isn't going to have any judges at all. Taking and sharing dirty photos of oneself—and conducting your romantic life online—are about as common among people under 30, including today's law students, as the cold.

While the judge is saying—quite rightly—that this is a "private matter" and refusing to answer questions from judgmental reporters, her husband is toeing the sex-negative/kink-as-mental-illness line. He's claiming that he placed the ads and shared them with his client because he was "coping with the deaths of his best friend and his brother." I'm not sure people buy that—does anyone believe that people cope with death by posting personal ads and seeking out sex partners they wouldn't otherwise be interested in?—but it is what people want to hear. So instead of saying, "Look, we're kinky, we're non-monogamous, and it's not anyone's business but our own," King is reinforcing the kind of sex-negative cultural prejudices that made his and his wife's private sex life—I'm only talking about the photos and kinks here, not King's professional misconduct—a public scandal. Not helpful, Mr. King.

Some people are kinky, some people are not monogamous, and some of those kinky, non-monogamous people are lawyers and some are judges. And some are reporters. I would put the odds that most or all of the twenty- and thirty-something reporters clucking their tongues at Lori Douglas have posed for dirty pictures and taken out personal ads at somewhere close to 100%. Here's hoping that some of their pics surface soon. It would be nice to see these preening, moralizing hypocrites at the CBC—which conducted a "months-long investigation" into Lori Douglas—brought down by the same sex negativity that they work so hard to perpetuate.

So anyone got any pics of the CBC reporters who worked on this story?