Society for Promotion of Community Standards

The Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc. ("SPCS") is a conservative Judeo-Christian lobby group in New Zealand. A registered charity and incorporated society, the Society has taken a strong censorship stance and clashed many times with the Office of Film and Literature Classification, the official censor.

The society was founded in 1970 by Patricia Bartlett, a former nun of the Roman Catholic Order of the Sisters of Mercy. She retired from the organisation in 1996. Membership of SPCS rose to a peak of 25,000 in the 1970s. Since then, membership numbers have declined to the present steady level of about 400.

The current president is John Mills, businessman and Elder of the Kapiti Christian Fellowship, and the executive director is David Lane. Lane is the most active figure in the society, researching current issues in New Zealand society with the information gathered being used for press releases and submissions.

Initially, the organisation campaigned against pornography in films, videos and magazines. However, Howley v Lawrence Publishing [1986] (Court of Appeal) initiated a string of anti-censorship court and regulatory decisions that came to rely on evidence-based social scientific proof for censorship policy decisions. This culminated in passage of the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993, and marginalised their campaign.

The SPCS has issued media releases opposing civil unions, hate speech bans, the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act, and the decriminalisation of sex work. The SPCS had repeatedly criticised Bill Hastings, while he was New Zealand's Chief Censor, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), and the Film and Literature Board of Review for what it believes to be their liberal application of censorship law. Some years ago SPCS submitted a number of film festival items to the Film and Literature Board of Review for reclassification, including, most notably, the French rape film "Baise-Moi". It contended the film should be banned, as it was by Australian censors. The campaign was initially successful, although after several appeals this film subsequently went on to general commercial release. The SPCS has also sought permanent bans of the films Kill Bill, Baise-Moi, Irreversible, Visitor Q, Bully, Ken Park, Anatomie de l'enfer, Twentynine Palms, Y Tu Mama Tambien, 9 Songs and The Piano Teacher, again on the basis of what the SPCS believed was their objectionable sexual and violent content. It has not succeeded in obtaining permanent bans of any of the above, however. In 2005, the SPCS unsuccessfully sought an R18 classification of the computer game Playboy: The Mansion.

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