Quoted: a U of T professor on why a controversial child eroticism researcher should be allowed into Canada

Dr. Kincaid is a really serious academic who has had a long career who has won two Guggenheims and they don’t just hand them out to pedophiles…His work is how society sexualized children. It’s not a “Yahoo, let’s celebrate pedophilia” event.

—Professor Barbara Cossman, director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto, responding to a request by Charles McVety to keep controversial academic Dr. James Kincaid out of Canada. California-based Kincaid is due to be the keynote speaker at a U of T symposium this month called “Bodies at Play, Sexuality, Children and Classroom Life,” drawing on his research into childhood and sexuality.

That is, unless McVety gets his way. The child safety advocate and president of Canada Christian College has written a letter to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander to request that Kincaid be stopped at the border. In it, he writes that “Dr. Kincaid is a well-known advocate for pedophilia,” in part because he believes that demonizing certain fantasies doesn’t solve the main problems of pedophilia. McVety goes on to write that Kincaid “has authored several books on the topic including Child Loving in which he states, ‘If the child is desirable, then to desire it can hardly be freakish. To maintain otherwise is to put into operation pretty hefty engines of denial and self-deception.’” [Toronto Sun]