Right now, scipy.sparse matrices containing boolean values do not support the boolean operators | & ^ ~, and instead you are forced to use numpy's bizarro mapping of these operations to arithmetic operations (| = +, & = *, ^ = -, ~ = - again). Scipy.sparse matrices should just support the boolean operators directly, both because this will make for clearer code, and because numpy is in the process of deprecating at least some of these operators (esp. the two senses of -), so the lack of these operators will soon become much more urgent.