Staff at gay porn studio Lucas Entertainment had plenty to talk about at the office water cooler this week.

The first was a bit of good news: the US-based company's film Piss! has just been nominated for a 2009 GayVN award for Best Fetish Film.

But on that same day, the studio learned from Xtra.ca that the Canada Border Services Agency has banned Piss! from entering Canada, along with another Lucas film, Farts!

Michael Lucas, the founder of the Lucas Entertainment, tells Xtra.ca that he thinks the agency's decision is "odd."

"I was surprised that a country which is more progressive than the United States, and more open-minded in areas like gay marriage, has some sort of obscenity law that would ban these videos," he says.

Piss! is pretty tame in comparison to some fetish flicks. In the film, horsehung Lucas fucks a few twinks and urinates in their mouths.

While the CBSA did not respond to requests for more information, it's clear from reading the agency's "obscenity indicators" that the piss-play content caught the attention of border agents.

In the CBSA's "Policy on the Classification of Obscene Material," the "ingestion of someone else's urine... with a sexual purpose" is listed as an indicator of obscenity.

CBSA considers the act of urinating into someone "degrading and dehumanizing, with a risk of substantial harm."

Lucas says he doesn't see how anybody could be degraded by it — especially considering that his actors have consented and know what they're getting into.

"For many people, it's a lot of fun and just another sexual fantasy," he says. "Some people like to get it, some people like to give it, some people like both and a lot of people like to watch it."

Canadian courts require porn to meet a "community standard of tolerance test." If a video "predisposes persons to act in an anti-social manner; in other words, in a manner which society recognizes as incompatible with its proper functioning," then the video will likely be deemed "obscene."

Lucas says he's not going to fight the CBSA. "It's not worth my money or my energy," he says.

But that doesn't mean he's backing down from his fetish films.

"I'm not going to change anything because of the old-fashioned laws of one country," he says.

Piss! and Farts! are available online and for rent at some sex shops in Canada, despite the border ban. It's not illegal to distribute the videos here, but they're likely to get blocked at the border, especially now that they have been red-flagged as prohibited items in the CBSA's system.

>> Read the full list of prohibited items, for the fourth quarter of 2008
(CBSA PDF, via gomorrahy.com)