The Censorship of Publications Bill in 1928 arose out of a Committee on Evil Literature and was commonly known initially as the Evil Literature Bill.
The Irish Times asked playwright Lennox Robinson what he thought of it. –
JOE JOYCE
‘I SUPPOSE I am expected to be deeply concerned about the effect of the Evil Literature Bill on Irish reading and Irish literature. I am not. I and my friends will continue to read exactly what we have been accustomed to read, and we will write what we want to write. The bill will make our younger writers a little more daring. That will be its only effect on them.
“Of course, Ireland, if this bill becomes law, will be the laughing stock of intelligent Europe, and I confess that I hate my country to look ridiculous; but I will get compensation and quiet amusement from perusing the expurgated Bible, the expurgated classics, and the expurgated Gaelic literature.
“But I am deeply concerned with aspects of the bill which have nothing to do with literature. Not ten per cent of Ireland is interested in literature, but all Ireland is interested in sex. Our standard of health, especially in the large towns, is deplorably low. This bill deliberately sets out to make it lower. I look with dismay - no, with positive horror - on anything that will shut young men’s and young women’s eyes to the awful consequences of venereal disease . The promoters of this bill must be extraordinarily ignorant of the crudest kind of psychology; they wish to prohibit anything ‘calculated to excite sensual passion’. Do they not know that the surest way of killing sensual passion dead is by making very public the awful risks that promiscuous sexual intercourse entails?
“Half the men and women in Ireland who are venereals are so through ignorance. Half of those who are pure are pure through terror - terror of the risks their passions expose them to. If the clauses in this bill prohibiting any reference to venereal disease are passed, the number of the afflicted will double itself in ten years, and a generation of the blind and the maimed will rise up to curse every man or woman in Dáil and Senate who, by his or her vote, has condemned it to a living death.
“If those who have forced this bill on the country are sincere, if they want to make us pure, they should implore the State to subsidise the publication of literature on the subject of venereal disease; they should see that warnings of its terrible effects - effects which inflict themselves not only on the guilty parties, but on the innocent wife, the so innocent children - are made broadcast, are pasted up in every public lavatory (as is the practice on the Continent), are lectured upon, are made public in every way whatsoever.
“The matter is grave and very urgent. I cannot speak of it without passion. My generation, thank God, is not entirely ignorant. We are fairly healthy, thanks to our knowledge. But the generation that will come after us --- ?”
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