See here for Ruskin’s comment on the original Sun story.
Ruskin sagely notes:
The Modernist intellectuals and our current elite would prefer us to be isolated individuals; broken of communal solidarity, common morality, self-sacrificing relationships, and mutual understanding. All are qualities reserved for our age of rampant individualism, secularism, and progress. One may not be capable of foreseeing the next insane idea to be thought up by the Modernists, but upon showing itself none of us are entirely surprised.
[…]
Yet there are more sinister underlying influences I suspect. It is close friendship which strengthens the character and loss of a close friend which toughens a child to future heartaches. These young friendships are critical in developing a mature, loving adult capable of forming long lasting relationships with their future spouse. But maybe this is their reason for doing so. Just as they advocate for open sexual relations with large amounts of people, so too they are advocating for the abolition of discriminatory, exclusive special bonds between children.
Just so; as in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’, best to break any but the most superficial of relations between people, making sex not a means for couple to deepen their relationship with each other, but as a mere form of entertainment, a diversion, which doesn’t actually increase intimacy between people, outside of its proper context. Along with that, discourage true friendships: if you can do it when children are young, they won’t learn the pattern for future life. There’ll be no more “You and me against the world”, i.e. against the State, and the Brave New World Order. Everyone will be forced to get in line… (The clones in the sci-fi movie “The Island” were forbidden from forming close friendships, too. Life imitates fiction…)