Let's start with this fun story:
The Nampa Public Library Board of Trustees made a decision to pull two sex books from the shelf, though they are not leaving the library.
Instead, the books will be kept in the library director's office, and patrons can specifically request to check them out.
This action was prompted by Randall Jackson, a man of "character"?:
Reportedly, Jackson once checked out the books and vowed never to return them, but the library eventually replaced the books.
Apparently Jackson isn't alone in his character:
Sometimes the books, Nampa Library Community Relations Coordinator Dan Black said, are checked out in protest and kept past their due dates. The books have also been checked out and not returned.
Further, Jackson is quoted from the meeting:
"They are images you would find in an adult book store - not in a publicly funded, library open to the public."
Pop Quiz!
Which offence would you start with?
- Censorship! Shouldn't libraries be independent providers of books their patrons want to read? If nobody wanted to read it, it wouldn't get checked out. If people want to know what is in the book whether because it may be entertaining or educational, that is their individual business, not the library's to control.
- One group forcing their particular form of "morality" on everyone. After all, the human body is an evil thing, not to be looked at, touched, used, or enjoyed in any way. :-O Well, ok, you can use your body for procreation in a monogamous heterosexual religiously sanctified relationship, but you aren't allowed to enjoy it, and we won't tell you how to do it.
- Theft! No, it isn't theft, after all, the library let Mr. Jackson remove the book by their policy of checking out books. The fact that he and others like him intentionally failed to return the books doesn't make it theft. NOT! Intent is everything -- it is the difference between murder and manslaughter, or in this case the difference between theft and being a careless patron.
- Denial of service attacks. By intentionally keeping the books past their date in "protest", these people are denying others the opportunity to check out the books and derive benefit from them.
- It was a Public Library. Yuppers, you read that right -- a public library as an offence. What aspect of providing large quantities of books, housing them, replacing them, staffing to manage the collection and facility, is a government protection of an individual's rights? Q. What percentage of a city's population have to use a library for it to be self-funding? A. A public library doesn't charge for access to the book collection. In this model, it cannot be self-funding! The library provides books out of the tax base, so everyone in a geographical area gets the county sheriff, deputies, and their guns (or more likely the state gov't to garnish wages by force) to ensure that you pay for your fair share of the books you don't read.
Did you expect to end up there? When I first was fuming about this, I didn't...
If you didn't have a public library, but instead had a self-funded private enterprise, then that enterprise would have no need to respond to the requests of "people with differing moral opinions". A book business could instead say "if you don't like our books, start your own store".
In the interest of full disclosure, I don't currently have a library card, but I have spent *many* hours in public libraries (city, county, state, university), wandering the stacks, reading anything and everything. My public school bus used to stop at the public library once a week so kids could go check out books, and I certainly indulged. I have recently provided support in the form of new equipment donations to public libraries, and I probably will do so again, but certainly not under the threat of force.
I even occasionally do wish I had a library card as I think of all the books I'd like to read that I have no time for...
rootie
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