After 22 Years, Bastards Are Banning Books Again in New Zealand – Call to Arms & Credit Cards.

This post ends with a link to a site where you can still buy the book, Into the River, outrageously banned in New Zealand today.

For the first time in 22 years a book has been banned in New Zealand under our archaic Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993.

The book is Ted Dawe’s young adult novel Into the River, winner of the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year in 2013 (for fucks sake).

The book has been banned from sale as offensive (because of language used and depictions of bullying [jazz hands, safe places again]) by the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review, Dr. Don Mathieson, QC and short-sighted fool, after lobbying by the medieval Christian fringe group Family First, a group which weekly celebrate one of the most abusive relationships I can think of; a father who made his son die by torture on a cross to prove his love for him (just like that insane bastard on Lord of the Rings; remember him? Tomato pips oozing down his chin). The same fantasists who would ensure - when I fear they get their way - we all must continue to suffer for their monstrous fairy tale God in our own deaths, by being the primary lobby trying to stymie a debate on euthanasia in New Zealand, despite a compassionate euthanasia law would be voluntary, and so they could still choose to die under their sado-suffering fetish if they wish. (This group which would force those without belief to obey their outlandish beliefs are the bullies here.)

I don’t know Mathieson, but I will not have this judge with a life experience probably nothing like my own, and for all I know born with a silver spoon up his arse, force his, and Family First’s, cruel, illiberal and in the case of this banning, free speech denying, morality on me. Whether children read this award winning book is a matter for their parents, not the bloody Nanny State and certainly not Dr. Mathieson.

Thankfully the Statists haven’t ‘yet’ taxed Amazon out of existence, because as of this post you can still purchase Into the River from them here. I put it to my readership that those of us who uphold the only sacred principle under debate today, free speech, have a duty to illegally buy this book.

Believe me, this post could have been very much purpler, but I self-censor, and that’s the only censorship a free country needs in the twenty first century. Will Dr Mathieson please Google classical liberalism then bugger off. As for Family First, they are, again, contemptible.

There are few things that the state can do worse than banning books - it is always a tipping point.

Footnote:

I've not read Into the River, and don't intend to because there's so much I want to read, and YA fiction does not form part of that. But then, my reading it or not isn't the point.

Update 1:

I've now seen two identity politick Twitter accounts questioning quote, 'an old, white man' writing a novel depicting teenage sex, proving again this dreadful brand of censorious feminism and race politics is every bit the Sharia inclined as Family First - I hope that makes some women and Maori think.

Update 2:

Look, per The Guardian, New Zealand is a joke now.

Update 3:

My repugnance is philosophical, and I couldn't care less about the legal niceties, however, a nice legal analysis of why Dr. Mathieson's decision is wrong, in law, here.