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Library employees are free to march under the city’s or their union’s banner, Pride decreed, just not under the library’s. This seems to assume some kind of institutional failure occurred for which rank-and-file employees shouldn’t be blamed. But in fact your average librarian is more likely than just about anyone else to argue against impeding free speech up to the point where it is legally prohibited — and except in truly extreme cases, for dealing with violations after the fact rather than imposing prior restraint.

Neither Murphy nor Smith has ever been accused of “hate speech” by anyone with a badge, let alone convicted. The B.C. Human Rights Code concerns itself with discriminatory publications, not panel discussions. The library credibly pointed to legal advice it had received, framing the matter as a legal obligation to protect free speech — which Canadian public institutions do, indeed, have. But the decision-makers are quite likely to have agreed philosophically as well. Why let such heretics march?

Photo by Eyoalha Baker

In free societies, libraries are essentially monuments against censorship, physical invitations to (literally) free inquiry, the original “safe spaces.” More and more, and certainly not just on the left, that ideal seems to be falling out of fashion. Two years ago, the Toronto Public Library was excoriated by everyone from Antifa to B’nai Brith for allowing Paul Fromm and various other neo-Nazi lowlights to rent a room for a memorial service for Barbara Kulaszka, a lawyer known for defending such people. The library dug in its heels, revised its policies to clarify what sorts of extreme cases might cause a refused booking, then dug in its heels in again. “The revised policy would not change the decision about allowing the … memorial,” head librarian Vickery Bowles told me at the time.