Censors rejoice over Minneapolis lawsuit settlemen

Fang-Face says:

Fanatics . . . give me a break!
This crap comes to us, of course, from the same snivellers who were whining about the ACLU’s threat of law suits against those libraries which fail to respect the legally defined limits of CIPA. Why am I not surprised to encounter this rank hyprocrisy?

I wonder if it is entirely beyond their capacity to understand that a “child protection” law cannot possibly be extended to legal adults or if they are merely being deliberately doltish.

Oh, and by the way: this is also another clear and present demonstration of the slippery slope in action. This is how the Taliban ended up banning paper bags as offensive to Islam:

http://mosaic.echonyc.com/~onissues/su98goodwin.ht ml

Fang-Face says:

Analysis of cenorship lawsuit movement
The following is a letter from the newsletter issue #373, for 20 Aug
2003, from Holt Uncensored.
It examines the situation with pornography as harrassment in public
libraries with crystal clarity and precision. Leastways that’s my call
on it. It is reprinted here without permission. –MN

Dear Holt Uncensored:

To respond to S. DeWine’s letter in Holt Uncensored #372, I wonder if
DeWine actually understands what harassment is. Under United States
Code Title 18 Subsection 1514(c)(1), harassment is “a course of
conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial
emotional distress in such a person and serves no legitimate purpose.”
In the personal examples that DeWine cites, the conduct of these
library patrons, while juvenile in nature, is not expressly directed
towards her or any particular person. DeWine may be distressed by the
public display of anatomy, but the turmoil is hardly as substantial
as, say, a professional singled out and ridiculed in a business
environment, overlooked for a promotion or a salary increase because
of her gender. DeWine’s “distress” cannot possibly equal the long-term
emotional distress of a woman who is raped, or a woman who is the
victim of domestic violence.

In our touchy-feely, politically correct age, it’s very common for
people of extraordinary sensitivities to be harassed by actions or
pursuits that have absolutely nothing to do with them. But if one
person was to litigate against every irksome individual that bothered
him, we’d have endless litanies of meaningless lawsuits piling up in
the courtrooms. Thankfully the legal definition of “harassment”
establishes a very clear precedent.

What troubles me the most about DeWine’s position is that it is
essentially the same attitude which motivates hypersensitive
“moralists” to lead assaults on “Captain Underpants” (it disturbs
because it encourages children to disobey authority), the “Harry
Potter” books (it disturbs because it deals with sorcery), “The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (it disturbs because it prominently
features a racial epithet), and Phyllis Naylor’s Alice series (it
disturbs because it is sexually frank). According to the ALA’s
informative Banned Books Week site, all of these “crusades” went down
last year. These amazing purges in the name of safety were pursued
because, like DeWine, a few people felt uncomfortable (possibly
“harassed”) with the content available to the public.But much like
DeWine’s approach to the filter system, they concentrated their
energies on the naughty bits of the book, rather than looking at the
situation holistically.

DeWine is also out to lunch with her preposterous idea that, somehow,
this all ties in with limousine liberalism. Since librarians are one
of the primary voices of opposition in this issue, it might pay to
check out how much they make. According to the September 2002 issue
of American Libraries, the 2002 mean salary for a beginning librarian
is $35,051. For a nonsupervisory librarian, it’s $44,279. For a
department head, coordinator, or senior manager, it’s $54,260. The
directors, of course, get the big bucks at $75,714. Thankfully, these
figures aren’t as dispiriting as one would presuppose. But it’s
certainly not the salary that allows a librarian to ride in a
limousine on a daily basis unless, of course, they’re personally
acquainted with someone in the rental business.

Ed Campion