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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!"
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