What Are Libraries For?
An interesting editorial here on the issue of libraries deciding that allowing access to pornographic web sites on library computers is part of their institutional duties. If you haven't heard that this is up and coming, here's an article on the situation in NYC.
I think the one quote in the second article is interesting. "The library provides access to anything that's protected by First Amendment rights", according to a Brooklyn library spokesman, Richard Reyes-Gavilan.
Libraries are not subscribing to pornographic web sites - shrinking budgets see to that as handily as any potential public outcry over decency. So apparently library patrons will have the option of using their own account information to log in to pornographic web sites on public library computers. One obvious question that might leap to mind is why this would be something people were willing to legally fight for the right to do.
But that question doesn't matter, apparently. What is legally permissible trumps common sense application of the law. Anybody with half a brain ought to consider the idea of adults watching pornographic content in a place frequented by children to be ludicrous. If not, then corner convenience stores ought to be able to display their pornographic magazines without blocks for the covers or slip covers or any of the other common sense nods to at least some modicum of decorum that have been customary. After all, if the magazines are not illegal, and are protected by First Amendment rights, then stores ought to be able to display them proudly and prominently, boosting sales in the process, perhaps.
How about decency limitations on the airwaves? Might as well get rid of those as well, right? Kids are going to see the stuff at the library anyways. Might as well cash in on more lucrative advertising revenues and start competing more stiffly with Netflix and cable stations, right? After all, it's legal, isn't it?
And Lord knows that whatever is legal is not simply legal, it is at some level mandatory. There's no sense in having something allowable by law but that nobody participates in, right? If something is legal, it's tantamount to saying that everyone ought to be engaged in it, right? Or at least that there ought not be absolutely any restrictions preventing someone from engaging in it in any public space.
And I'm sure at some level there's the recognition that porn is probably more likely to draw in new library patrons than a new collection of Hardy Boys books or a few new copies of Shakespeare's works. I wonder what the slashing of budgets might contribute to a greater willingness to allow any legal activity that might spur greater public interest in libraries?
Do your local libraries allow this? Do you know if they allow this? How do you seek to protect your children (and yourself) from this sort of material? And isn't there some sort of legal right to not have to risk exposure to pornography just to do research for a school report?!
Posted by Paul Nelson at 5/2/2011 9:24 PM 
Categories: Citizenship, Parenting, Philosophy, Current Events
Categories: Citizenship, Parenting, Philosophy, Current Events
For several years in the high schools, students using the library computers have been on these pornographic sites. Being a computer dinosaur myself, it amazes me how fast with the click of a mouse these students can get off and on the sites without the library monitors catching them. How do we protect our children and grandchildren when they are away from us?? Constant praying is all I can come up with.
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I have no doubt that students have been finding ways to do this for some time. There's a key difference between circumventing the rules and having the rules rewritten so that there is no offense! It's the assumption that this behavior ought to be acceptable that baffles me!
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