I am a member of ALA and have attended several national conferences and I am involved in several committees. I am positive that you are wrong about libraries being forced to abide by ALA rules. They only do that insofar as individual librarians or other local groups in charge choose to make it so. The ALA does not have the power to close down libraries or insist that libraries abide by anything.
Children's access to pornography is a hot issue in libraries. Many librarians resent children who can barely talk being dropped off by busy parents for unsupervised visits at the local library. It is true that the ALA's bill of patron rights does say something like "Any material in the library shall be available to any patron regardless of age, race, gender..." etc. I've never heard from anyone, even the most liberal, that they see this as a call to provide pornography to children. I have pressed this issue numerous times because I think it should be rewritten but nobody seems to think it is a problem.
The internet is what has made this a growing issue, because most libraries do not have Playboy (we have it at the university library where I work but it is on microfilm and microfiche). Libraries have been forced to deal with the issue of the internet and children because of CIPA, which trumps anything they might choose to follow about the ALA.
In fact though, libraries are full of books that most parents probably would not want their children to read. I'm not talking about just "The Joy of Gay Sex" or other controversial titles. There are things that most people would agree are okay for libraries to offer for adults that I would not want children to be reading. Most libraries believe it is the parents' responsibility to monitor what their children are reading.
Burkean, you are very well spoken, and I agree with most of what you say.
For example, you are correct when you, and the ALA even, says parents are responsible for what children are reading. But, and it's a big but, that is not the whole story.
Parents being responsible is fine, but two things are very important. 1) The ALA creates a pool of books from which the children may choose that contain quite a lot of inappropriate material. Sometimes, for example, the ALA gives such books awards, such as
Looking For Alaska. The ALA awards this for kids as young as 12. I personally got the award winning author to say he would not give his own award winning book to his own 12 year old if he had one -- he thought 14 would be more appropriate. This is like a hotel saying parents are responsible for children in the children's swimming pools but placing into the pools dangerous toys for children.
2) The other thing the ALA does is mislead the parents as to the contents of the books. Totally inappropriate books may be called "coming of age" books. mention of any controversial content is expunged from the material parents get to evaluate the books. The ALA even has contradictory pages on it own site sometimes recommending a book about sex with babies in Pampers and children performing oral sex on both parents and sometimes saying it is only for older students.
In other words, there is no informed consent. The ALA wins either way. If you are not informed, the ALA says you should be. If you get informed, and the ALA is the trusted source, you are misled about the inappropriate nature of the books. Either way, parents lose, children lose, and the ALA wins given the rules of the game are set up by the ALA and the full truth is never revealed.
This is like the hotel telling the parents the pools are perfectly safe and the children will enjoy the pools when there are actually materials unsafe for the children in the pool about which the hotel did not inform the parents. The parents are entitled to rely on the hotel managers. Similarly parents are entitled to rely on the recommendations of the ALA. But in either case, the parents were not informed, the children got harmed, and the hotel or the ALA can claim the children's safety is the parent's responsibility so no liability attaches. The hotel would lose that case. The ALA should lose as well.
That's more truthful. Now, knowing the ALA is recommending inappropriate books for children, and at the same time misleading the parents about the contents of those books, do you still feel the parents are at fault for their children reading highly recommended, award winning books about inappropriate sexual material and the like?