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Books could have been transferred to adults’ section

Advocates calling the National Library Board out on its decision on the books And Tango Makes Three and The White Swan Express have unfortunately characterised this issue as one of freedom of speech and censorship.

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Timothy Lau Zheng Yi

Advocates calling the National Library Board out on its decision on the books And Tango Makes Three and The White Swan Express have unfortunately characterised this issue as one of freedom of speech and censorship.

Legitimate restrictions on free speech exist in varying degrees across all societies.

The real question is how the two books had landed in the children’s section, effectively placing homosexual relationships on par with heterosexual ones — a parity that is not endorsed legally or politically in our nation.

Accordingly, the issue pertains more accurately to what would constitute legitimate censorship or curatorship, particularly of children’s books, by the NLB, which exercised its curatorial function with integrity in this case.

Perhaps a savvier public relations move would have been to transfer the two books to the adults’ section, where homosexual-themed content is available to discerning adult readers.

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