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Seattle Library Lets Man Watch Porn On Computers Despite Complaints
The Lake City library is making news for their staunch position on the First Amendment, censorship, and the right to watch porn in the library. The problem started when library patron Julie Howe found a man watching some questionable material and asked him to move to another computer. The man refused and the librarian also refused to intervene when asked saying that the library doesn't censor content. "We're a library, so we facilitate access to constitutionally protected information. We don't tell people what they can view and check out," Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Andra Addison told Seattle PI. "Filters compromise freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. We're not in the business of censoring information."
When I lived in Switzerland I observed people, for lack of a better term, fucking at the bus stop in the middle of the day (hands down the pants, moaning, fucking). I saw lesbians fucking (the naked kind) on the public beach that was filled with everyone, including families, having their weekend fun in the sun. People just don't care. If you avoid the crazy mindfuck of creationism and the idea that we somehow aren't animals, you'll simply realize that human children have been subjected to sex and reproduction from early ages for 10,000s of years at the very least (800,000 or so, depending on what you consider human).
Libraries exist to provide information privately and equally to all people. What they are doing is pretty admirable, imo, just as admirable as refusing to remove books because of some uptight jackasses 2 decades ago.
Yes, I have kids.
My sister was a public librarian. Mild mannered, serious, studious, introverted, and a quiet, but ardent radical when it came to access to information. It is a libraries duty to provide information, of all kinds, to anyone.* She was not atypical. Her libraries position on patrons viewing pr0n was to require them to use a privacy screen so the content was not viewable without some effort on the part of other patrons, and perhaps have them move to a more private location.
Whacking it in the library, however, was subject to arrest for indecency.
*okay, when the eight year old kid came in looking for information on leukemia, they usually would try to get a sense of why they were asking, and provide them with suggestions as to someone who could put it in context. But the high school kids looking for advice on cultivating cannabis, or bomb making? No problem. When the Patriot Act came out and said that library circulation records would be subject to search without warrant, many libraries destroyed their circulation records.
I have never seen a family in a library, and of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of times I have visited a library, I was never there with family members.
Furthermore, the Library is an important place for sex ed. I read "Everything you ever wanted to know about sex (but were afraid to ask)" from cover to cover in the library, as I was afraid to try checking it out and taking it home. That book was in the children's section, by the way, and GOD BLESS the librarian who put it there.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Don't most libraries already enforce age restriction and segregation
Hell no, not any library I've ever seen.
Sure most libraries have a children's section and an "adult" section, but when I was in elementary school the children's section got too damn boring after about a half hour. I spent all my time in the very same section of the library that holds the Marquis de Sade books. Several times I went to the librarian requesting assistance finding stuff from the adult section. I took out lots of books, and probably every single one came from the adult section.
Never once did any any librarian tell me I wasn't supposed to be there. They were all extremely helpful.
As long as a kid isn't running and screaming, any good librarian is pleased to see a young person with the interest and ability to utilize the adult section. I dunno, maybe your community library was different. Did you grow up in some repressive fundie backwater?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.