Again and again, public authorities in Ireland are out of step with the popular mood in this country. The Board of Censors got it into their not very large heads that something should be done about In Dublin advertisements for massage parlours and in a perfectly scandalous and very possible illegal extension of their powers, banned the magazine.
Simultaneously, the same cretins - one of whom is a journalist no journalist I know has ever heard of, though this doesn't stop her from telling her fellow-journalists what they may or may not read - are banning various imported British girlie magazines, though of course they are freely available in the North.
If there were a popular demand for this kind of intrusive, sanctimonious censoriousness, then there might some justification for their witless endeavours; but there is not. We have changed unrecognisably in the past five years, and it is not the duty of the Board of Censors or any other public body to approve (or otherwise) those changes. We can rage about the Ireland that is gone; we can yearn for the simple days of Ireland's Eye and the Walton's Music Programme on Radio Eireann and bishops blessing a platoon of FCA weekend warriors in a muddy field. But that Ireland is as gone as the Wild Geese.
"Outcry"
Yet those in public office don't seem to know this. So, just as the Board of Censors imagined - and "imagined" is the word - that it was their bounden duty to do their bit to close down the sex industry, gardai respond to the "outcry" over the In Dublin advertisements, and, apparently reeling in amazement at the discovery that there might be something fishy about these ads, raise a task-force to look into the sex trade. Where, precisely, did they hear this "outcry"? And can it really have been the case that, up until then, gardai thought that the advertisement for Lovely Blonde Sheena Who Does It Standing Up was actually for a washerwoman?
Of course the issue isn't whether or not one approves of massage parlours. There are many things which go in such places which most people in Irish life abhor. All we can do is ask a couple of questions. Do these activities involve adults only? Are those adults freely consenting participants to these activities?
If the answer is no to either, then the Garda Siochana is absolutely right to move against them with all the rigour at its command. If the participants are consenting adults in private, is it my business or anybody else's what they do?
What about the law? Is it not the duty of the Garda Siochana to enforce the law? It is, sort of. It is illegal to permit ragwort to grow on your ground. It is illegal to allow your licensed premises to remain open after legal closing time. It is illegal to sell unpasteurised milk. It is illegal to. . .oh, what the hell.
The real question is this: Is there any point in enforcing particular laws? Do certain laws inevitably - the now extinct laws criminalising male homosexual behaviour being an example - not fall into abeyance?
Even before the "public" fuss over massage parlours - created not by the public at all but by prigs in authority - has died down, Dublin Corporation issues a writ against the Ann Summers shop on O'Connell Street, ordering it to cease trading. It is probably acting ultra vires, just as the Censorship Board was when it banned In Dublin; it is with equal probability acting in ignorance of what Ann Summers actually sells. But what matter law or knowledge if one is the self-appointed guardian of public morality?
Only the public doesn't want to be guarded any more. The days of infantile Ireland expecting to be protected from its sexual urges by State censors, by government and by Pooterish busybodies from Dublin Corporation are over; finished; dead and gone for ever. But of course those who have chosen to enter public life do not see that. And they will not see it until they are made to see it, for the very reason that they became public officials was that they could interfere with other people's lives.
Sex business
Ann Summers can call itself whatever it likes. Its business is sex and sexuality. There is nothing offensive about such a business; otherwise it would not attract so many women. Shops which specialise in erotic clothing and in devices to intensify women's sexual responses exist all over Europe. So why would Dublin Corporation, which stood poised, inert, thumb in mouth for 10 years while the city was being choked by traffic, now feel it has the moral and legal right to move with such devastating alacrity against a shop whose business is merely increasing a woman's enjoyment of her body?
Is it because it thinks that's what people want? They don't. The re-election of Emmet Stagg in a rural constituency spoke volumes about the new Ireland which has emerged in recent years. It is easy going. It is sexually libertarian. Most of all, it is tolerant. It doesn't expect people to conform to some moral template devised by the Catholic Church, the Censorship Board, or Dublin Corporation. We all know that; the only question is: when will officials and politicians realise the truth that the rest of us now take for granted?