The Phantom Tsunami of Book Bannings in Canada

 

I am apparently a “free speech absolutist.” Which is what they call anyone these days who believes in free speech. 

So when I saw the CBC headline “Calls to ban books are on the rise in Canada,” I thought I’d be outraged by these calls for book banning.

Yeah; no.

What the article calls book banning is actually just restricting access to books in school libraries. 

And which books? “Books that deal with sexuality, 2SLGBTQ+ themes or gender diversity.”

In other words, pornography. Books that deal with sexual activities.

Just to begin with, a book is not banned if it is not featured in a library. All libraries are curated. 

And a school library is supposed to be curated in the spirit of guardianship, in loco parentis, for the same reason children are required to attend classes and study what the teacher and the curriculum says. Children do not have the right to vote, or to have sex, or to work, or, broadly, to make their own decisions; they are children, and wards. They naturally do not have the right to read whatever they want.

Even for adults, there is a free speech case for censoring pornography. The point of free speech, as John Stuart Mill explains, is to ensure a free and open discussion of ideas, so that truth may be known. Pornography is not exactly heavy with ideas, other than the idea that one should have sex, perhaps unconventional sex. It does not seek truth, is not about seeking truth; it is purely a form of entertainment, like bear-baiting. Which, at best, is lacking in social importance, in the words of an old US Supreme Court ruling. There is no problem with censoring or banning such things.

Surely the only possible point in calling the restriction of pornography in school libraries “book banning” is to trivialize all objections to censorship, and make real book banning seem reasonable. And, when someone objects to any actual book banning, allowing the left to claim hypocrisy, and to say "you want book banning too! You want to ban any books you disagree with too!"

The Job of Sex

 

The young Herakles chooses between virtue and pleasure

I recently participated in a public poetry reading. There were nine poets featured. Three were long in the tooth. Six were young, in their twenties. Five of these six openly identified on the program or during the performance as LGBTQ. 

This seems to be the trend: the number of young people declaring themselves gay or transgender is growing exponentially.

One thing is clear, at least: people are not “born this way.” You cannot have an epidemic of a genetic condition.

It is happening because sex is boring.

The urge to reproduce is powerful. That first time having sex is powerful, and tends to bond emotionally. But once you separate sex from reproduction and emotional commitment, and make it about physical pleasure, it soon loses its magic. 

Then one of two things happen. Many or most move on to other interests. In Japan, they have always been into rather kinky sex in youth. At the same time, after the kids are born, most Japanese marriages become sexless. But in our current society, sex has been glorified as almost the purpose of life. We have separated sex from love for several generations; the slogan at the recent LGBTQ clambake in a local park, “Love is louder than Hate” is a lie. Sex is not love, and conflating the two reduces others to objects existing for your pleasure. 

And then it can be like an addiction: trying to find some new twist and heavier and heavier doses in order to recover that original thrill. Hence not just promiscuity, but sexual experimentation. Sex with other men; sex in the role of the woman; sex with pain; sex pretending to be an animal …. At some point, sex with children inevitably comes to mind.

“What good thing is yours, madam, or what pleasant thing, if you do nothing to earn them? You do not even wait for desire, but fill yourself with all things before you crave them. …. You rouse your lust by many a trick, when there is no need nor end in children. Thus you enslave your friends, waxing wanton by night, consuming in sleep the loveliest hours of day.” – Xenophon, “Herakles at the Crossroads.”

The problem has grown quickly in recent years with the easy availability of online porn. The young, impelled to it by instinct, are bound to get jaded with normal sex at an early age. Some lose interest in sex; and so in reproducing. And that is a growing problem for society. Others become sex addicts, often publicly advertising their availability, and will, sooner or later, be coming for the children…or dispensing with the requirement for consent.