Fairness and Censorship have become completely fluid concepts with the advent of liberal patronage. When a liberal says they will make something ‘fair’ they generally mean they will abridge the freedom of one group in order to facilitate the oppression of another. When a liberal says someone is being ‘censored’ it generally means that they have been forbidden to put their smut in plain view of other people’s children. Consider this quote from the website Freedom Forum, which advocates freedom of speech:

In a national campaign launched this summer, a group called Morality in Media is targeting sex-saturated magazines menacing children and adults alike in grocery store checkout lines. No, not Playboy and Penthouse, but Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, Glamour and Mademoiselle. Morality in Media wants the stores either to drop the magazines or put them in plain brown wrappers. One mother said, "Magazine covers sometimes force parents to confront issues that children aren't yet ready for." Nor are the parents.

No. Not Playboy, but Cosmopolitan and its ilk, which no longer offer just makeup tips but such glaring headlines as “Be a Sex Genius! These Brilliantly Naughty Bed Tricks will Double His Pleasure…and Yours!” as well as “Little Mouth Moves that Make Sex Hotter,” both headlines featured on the cover of the April 2008 issue of Cosmopolitan. Nor is this an aberration. Not a month goes by that Cosmo (in my opinion the worst offender) does not have at least one major headline advertising sexual pursuits right on the cover. Even when a vendor puts these magazines into a “U” shaped blocker the headlines can usually be seen. 

Now is it censorship to ask that these magazines not be displayed where a minor will be necessarily exposed to them? I have asked that our local stores either cover the headlines or move the magazines to the magazine aisle. The magazine aisle is a place I can voluntarily avoid when I bring my children to the store. The checkout line is not. 

If it is censorship to require sexually explicit writing be placed forty feet away, where a parent can reasonably avoid it, where does censorship end? In Barnes v. Glen Theatre, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld nude dancing as a form of free speech falling under the rubric of “protected expressive conduct.” Well by the logic that labels moving magazines out of the checkout ‘censorship’, is it not also censorship to require that these dancers remain in adults-only bars? Why should the outdated Victorian sensibilities of some parents who are uncomfortable with their own sexuality impede the freedom of other, more enlightened Wal-Mart shoppers to be entertained by nude dancers in the checkout lanes?

The irony is that the liberal elite are constantly warning that we will go down the slippery slope, as if moving Cosmo to the magazine aisle will result in public flogging for women who show their ankles a generation hence. Meanwhile, “free speech” has metamorphosed from the right to protest the war on a college campus to the Folsom Street Fair where gay men can openly copulate in a public street while onlookers cheer them. Oh, and they can bring the kids.

It is not ‘banning’ to move something elsewhere. Similarly, the outrage over Sarah Palin supposedly questioning a librarian about particular books was used to label her a ‘book-banner’. A library holds a limited number of books. If a particular community would rather the space in their library be taken up with something other than Mein Kampf it should be the community’s choice. Anyone who wants to read Mein Kampf can surely get it on the internet.

The hypocrisy of the liberal elite and their purposely fluid understanding of censorship is best observed in the context of the wall between Church and State which has transformed from the federal government being forbidden to establish a national religion to five-year-olds being forbidden to pray at snack time in the public school lunch room. Not only are crude descriptions of fornication free speech, but they are required to be stocked in the checkout line or the First Amendment is under attack. However, when a little girl in California held hands with two of her classmates and recited this prayer: “God is great; God is good, thank you God for my food” a teacher reprimanded her and sent her to the school administration. Her parents were informed in writing that their little girl is not allowed to pray aloud in school or with others. Afterward the school bragged in the media about their actions. A lawsuit against the school vindicated the girl’s right to pray, but not to hold hands with her friends when she did it.

Fairness as well has taken on some convoluted usage when emitting from the mouths of our liberal friends. In the name of “fairness,” they have proposed hate crime laws that necessarily criminalize opinion, the removal of the secret ballot measure during the potential unionization of a workplace, the favoring of individuals of one sex or race even in the instance of superior performance of individuals of alternate sex or race in college admissions and employment, the abdication of one’s earnings in order that Congress may dictate the amount and disbursement of our charity, control of the programming of broadcasters over the radio and internet if those broadcasters offer opinions antithetical to the elite’s version of reality, and the list goes on and on. 

Americans need to get their heads out of the sand and start paying attention to the actions of our legislators. We need to stop just tuning in for a few weeks before an election to see who has the best speeches. We need to know what is the true intent behind promises of fairness and accusations of censorship because the words liberals speak often bear little resemblance to the results they are seeking.