Town Refuses to Ask Citizens If Library Porn Should Be Filtered Out - Please Help Us!

Plan2Succeed.org ^ | 22 Dec 2003 | Plan2Succeed.org

[plan2succeed.org]

Town Refuses to Ask Citizens If Library Porn Should Be Filtered Out; Plan2Succeed.org Seeking Pro Bono Counsel.

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Something is wrong when a small group of people called a Library Board of Trustees determines that a public library must continue to allow access to pornography despite admittedly being outside the library's mission, the Township Committee claims it is powerless to stop the Board, and the citizens have no say.

[leadpenny]

Of course citizens have a right to decide what goes into their library. It's done all the time. Deciding to keep Hustler Magazine out of a library is a bit different than putting filters on the servers for the internet that is already there. All I'm saying is leave the internet access at a public library the same as the access I have on my home computer. If someone abuses their privilege at the library, suspend them, through them out or handle it through the library board or the courts. Until someone does something questionable, leave them alone.

[RightWhale]

ACLU is slick. They sent an expert from Anchorage. Once the discussion got a little off the script, though, the expert wasn't so confident.

[glannon]

that report is a result of a request for comments. the most recent studies it uses are from 1998. look at appendix III.

[Antoninus]

Yeah, I know what porn is. It's some jack-booted thug who gets all exercised about what other people believe.

Spare us your sanctimony. This debate has been improperly framed since the 1960s. What you porn-pushers are really about is forcing your immorality on the rest of us. Be honest: do you believe that a local government has the right to set up its own standards of morality or must such standards (or lack thereof) be imposed from a power-hungry federal government?

[Antoninus]

And, who's gonna define "common sense?"

Common sense was rendered extinct when a bunch of old men in robes overturned 180 years of Constitutional law in the 1960s by making pornography a civil right. Since then abortion and sodomy have become civil rights with homo marriage, prostitution, polygamy, incest, and a whole host of other pre-civilized vices queuing up for legitimization.

Talk to me about common sense....

[Antoninus]

You have a responsibility to supervise your child's use of the Internet. The library exists for the public, not just children. The library must allow free access to information even if you do not like that information.

Right. So then why not have stacks of Hustler sitting out in the stacks? Seems like it makes perfect sense in your bizzaro world.

Seriously, though--is it so bad if there be a separate room for "adults-only-filter-free" computing? Come on, people!

[leadpenny]

Porn-pusher? Getting mighty loose with your name-calling. Take a deep breath, you're in charge of the library filter in your county library system; what do you filter out and what do you leave in? What setting do you put it on? While you're at it, you might want to go through every book in the library so you can eliminate anything that has a sexually explicate passage. How about books on tape? Lot's of bad words in those.

[Antoninus]

Freedom is messy. Deal with it?

Yeah, so was the French Revolution. That's the kind of "freedom" you advocate. Not freedom, but license. True freedom has personal responsibility and morality as a prerequisite. De Tocqueville knew it 160 years ago. Many of us have forgotten it today. If the number who have forgotten ever becomes larger than those who remember, we can expect nothing but chaos. Vive le Republique American!

[Humidston]

And it is also my understanding that he requested the curtain because the liberal reporters enjoyed shooting pics of him - with the breasts hovering over his head - while he made important policy statements.

Odd, I never remember seeing Janet Reno dealing with that dilemma. I guess they loved her too much to insult HER the same way.

[leadpenny]

I think you have more "issues" than library filters.

[Antoninus]

"Filtering is not the end-all to this problem," Most said. "You can't eliminate it (pornography). It's something that's been there forever."

How idiotic. I wonder if this person would argue that porn is no more prevalent today than it was 50, 100, or 216 years ago? Heck, I've only been around for 32 years, but I can say it's much more prevalent today than it was even 10 years ago. Porn is practically ubiquitous today and society is becoming only uglier as a result.

[Antoninus]

You are talking about censorship. The adult supervision thing is the right way to go.

We already practice censorship in this country--for good reason. Would you really like kiddie porn to be freely available everywhere?

[leadpenny]

Try calming down, go back and address 207. Just for grins.

[Antoninus]

Yes, I favor intelligent censorship. If we don't, then gays will start plugging each other in the library. Who can tell them no. That would be censorship.

It's already happened at highway rest-stops where cops have been ordered not to disturb homo "lovers" in the act. I distinctly remember how uncomfortable the restrooms were in my university's libraries--the stalls were covered with homo-graffiti looking for "dates."

The "anything-goes" society is a sure path to annihilation. Pity the poor fools who don't understand that porn, casual sex, homosexuality, abortion, STDs, and mental illnesses are all sides of the same die.

[leadpenny]

Yup, library filters will take care of all that. I gotta go watch some decadent Seinfeld episodes.

[GladesGuru]

Me thinks thou hast made an argumentative stand upon the ground commonly called 'quicksand'. Perhaps before deciding I have committed an absurd argument, consider that the criminalization of alcohol was a disaster for all but the criminal classes.

Try to remember that Santayana was correct about those who refuse to learn from history - and fortunately for America the Volstead Act is history!

The answer to an America half destroyed by its attempts to perfect socialism is the elemination of those socialsim predicated laws, NOT CONTINUED ENFORCEMENT OF THEM!!!

Eric Hofer accurately defined fanaticism as redoubling ones efforts in the face of certain failure.

Parents raise children, not schools, not libraries.

[GladesGuru]

"they do work, according to the US Dept of Commerce: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/ntiageneral/cipa2003/"

We're from the Dept. of Commerce, TRUST US.

Anybody ever heard this line before?

Who sets the filter parameters? Please, please, plese don't tell me you prefer to allow a distant 'crat to make local decisions.

[little jeremiah]

Your argument is still wrong. It is legal to buy alcohol, but not at the library. Not at the local candy store. And not to children. So why should pornography be available to them?

And as far as your statement:

Parents raise children, not schools, not libraries.

Just because parents are the people legally, morally and ethically in charge of raising their own children, this doesn't mean that nothing else in the environment has any effect on them, or that parents' responsibility stops at their front door. Additionally, it is in the best interests of society to maintain social standards that foster raising children to become responsible adults. It is neither right nor sensible to create a culture saturated with laissez faire sex, disgusting, perverse and unredeemably stupid media and education, and expect the parents to reverse the influence of the rest of the world.

[Oztrich Boy]

That's Aschrofts place of work. If he finds it offensive, as some people do, he has every right to cover it up resign.

If someone put something up you found offensive at your business, you have no right to take it down or cover it up. What kind of twisted idea of the first amendment is that.

It's not Ashcroft's business. He is the employee. He has no right to change the appearance of the work of art installed by his employer.

[GladesGuru]

Antoninus,

You are almost there - what about having filtered computers for the under-aged crowd from families with grossly deficient parenting skills? That leaves the rest of the patrons able to access breast cancer sites without running afoul of being blocked because the word 'breast' is on the filter's list of no, no's.

No society can tolerate the reduction its self to the level of ill-bred children.

And let us never forget that the creation of such pitifully un-acculturated children is the poison fruit of the Tree of Liberalism.