This makes me upset....
www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1011029.html
Gah. Censorship. Look if you arent the child's parent you have no right to remove the hold on their patron account and deny them that book. Heck you have no right as a patron, much less a library worker, to deny other patrons a book which the library has deemed acceptable. The ALA has rules in place for these challenges as do most libraries.
I'll just leave these final thoughts
As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in Texas v. Johnson, said most eloquently:
If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
If we are to continue to protect our First Amendment, we would do well to keep in mind these words of Noam Chomsky:
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Or these words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ("The One Un-American Act." Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 1953, p. 20):
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
Gah. Censorship. Look if you arent the child's parent you have no right to remove the hold on their patron account and deny them that book. Heck you have no right as a patron, much less a library worker, to deny other patrons a book which the library has deemed acceptable. The ALA has rules in place for these challenges as do most libraries.
I'll just leave these final thoughts
As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in Texas v. Johnson, said most eloquently:
If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
If we are to continue to protect our First Amendment, we would do well to keep in mind these words of Noam Chomsky:
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Or these words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ("The One Un-American Act." Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 1953, p. 20):
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.