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Judging by her speech to the Empire Club on Monday afternoon, however, the librarian’s not for turning. Bowles stressed that the library has learned lessons from the Murphy fracas and is actively trying to build or rebuild bridges with the LGBTQ community. But when it comes to the library’s doctrinaire, classically liberal stance on speech, if anything her heels seem even further dug in.

“I consider myself a social justice warrior,” she said. “My passion for librarianship is my commitment to equity and inclusion, and to the marginalized communities. And you support those communities by supporting intellectual freedom and free speech — because it’s those voices that are so often being shut down.”

There is no conflict between equity and inclusion and free speech, she insisted: “They’re mutually reinforcing principles. I don’t believe for a moment they’re at odds. … And I believe that when I stand up for free speech, allowing Meghan Murphy (to speak), I’m standing up for the transgender community and the LGBTQ community, because I’m making sure that voices are not being shut down.”

Photo by Postmedia News

This shouldn’t be so difficult a case to make. As Bowles observed, libraries in general and Toronto’s in particular were decades in front of larger society, never mind the law, when it came to LGBTQ rights. And they couldn’t have been had they been susceptible to precisely the sort of censorious instincts that are being brought to bear on libraries today. The moment public institutions start picking and choosing who can speak and who cannot is the moment a society erects random, unknown barriers to progress.