Banned Books - Part 3

Why are books challenged? Usually it's done with the best of intentions--to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information (such as sex or sex education, homosexuality, or religion).

Censorship can be subtle--almost imperceptible--as well as blatant and in-your-face. John Stuart Mill wrote the following in On Liberty:

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only a few persons or many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is tat it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

According to the list of the top 100 challenged books, the three top reasons books are challenged are because the material is considered to:

1. be "sexually explicit";
2. contain "offensive language"; and
3. be "unsuited to age group".

And, according to this list, the group that challenges most frequently is parents.

Well, yahoo. Part of doing your job as a parent is to keep unsuitable material away from your children. That's why I do believe that a library is NOT the place for adults to get online and surf around porn sites. Come on. You want it that bad, stop buying beer and cigarettes and save up for a computer of your own. We don't need six year olds walking by the computer carrols and seeing (and hearing) pornography.

That said, it's not your right as a parent to determine what my child can or cannot read. That's my job. (Or it would be if I had kids.) I might think Judy Blume's books are entirely suitable for my pre-teen daughter because it's yet another way to educate her about herself and her body and the real world around her. Plus it has a character that has a real--and close--relationship with God. If you don't want your kid to read it, don't let her. Just don't try to tell me that me and mine can't read it if we want to and that we can't access it from our local library, which my freakin' taxes pay for.

Seems pretty simple to me.





"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." ~Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas