My open letter to Dr. Charles McVety about his petition to bar the keynote speaker at OISE's pedophilia-friendly symposium

Dear Dr. McVety:

As readers of my blog Eye on a Crazy Planet are aware, it was there that the news first broke that a University of Southern California Professor named James Kincaid would be delivering the keynote address to at University of Toronto/OISE/York University symposium called Bodies at Play: sexuality, classroom and childhood life.  I wrote about it because of my serious concern that Professor Kincaid's theories lent credence to those who propose that adult sexual attraction to children is normal. That is a theory which I find both entirely false and morally repugnant, since the obvious ramifications of it are that if the instinct is normal, then it would not be "abnormal" to act upon that instinct.

Such theories have no valid place in our education system and the fact that OISE/U of T would be presenting their advocate to teachers charged with the care of young children who are the potential victims of its outcome is odious.

It has come to my attention that you have begun a petition, based upon knowledge you gained from my blog postings on this matter, calling for Federal Immigration Minister Chris Alexander to bar Professor Kincaid's entry to Canada.

While I share your concerns about the symposium and the OISE's attempt to proliferate Kincaid's appalling theories, I think your approach is not only wrong but is counterproductive.

By attempting to ban Professor Kincaid's entry to Canada, I believe you are detracting from a more important aim and will turn the issue into one of "free speech" and "academic freedom." Both of those principles are important facets of or our society that need to be preserved and protected.

While the ideas Kincaid proposes should be condemned, to the best of my knowledge, he has never broken any laws nor has he explicitly advocated for sex between children and adults.

The University of Toronto and OISE should be shamed for the disgraceful sexualized and politicized curriculum they are promoting in our public school system. The Ontario Ministry of Education has acted in a reprehensible manner by allowing the indoctrination of children to be part of their education. Exposure and condemnation is in order for both, as well as the need for a complete review and overhaul of our education system.

The problem is not James Kincaid the person, but the ideas that are already here, deeply infused at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, a radical, politicized education institution that is the most influential teachers' faculty in Canada.

Beyond that, as you must be aware, technology is such that even if Professor Kincaid were not physically present in Canada, he would still be able to present and interact with the symposium through teleconferencing.

I commend you for your efforts to draw attention to the disgraceful promotion of the normalization of pedophilia which OISE/U of T and York University are promoting through its symposium.  I would hope that attention and public outcry would shame them, and the Ministry of Education that supports them, into reconsidering presenting Professor Kincaid.

But I also believe that the force of the state should not be used against someone who, though promoting disgusting ideas, has neither broken nor advocated the breaking of our laws.


Richard Klagsbrun