'Lolita' Could Be Pulled From Library's Shelves

[ECH1969]

50-year-old classic novel about forbidden love is shaking things up. The controversy centers on the book "Lolita" and whether it's obscene under today's standards, WESH 2 News reported.

"Lolita" is a famous novel full of pages and pages of sexually explicit material about pedophilia.

"I believe that you, at least hypothetically, could read this book and consider it obscene," said Terry Blaes, of Dunnellon.

She challenged the Marion County Commission to determine whether they should pull "Lolita" from public library shelves, as they have the right to do so. "I want you to think about the effect of literature on the people who read it, children and adults," she said.

http://www.wesh.com/news/6251817/detail.html?subid=22100409&qs=1

[sasha031]

1. how about Scooter Libb'ys book

I have a problem with writers who put liilte girls in cages and being sexually molested by a bear.

[Theres-a]

25. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[0007]

69. The Democratic party should make an issue out of Libby's

book.

[HuffleClaw]

78. girls in cages molested by bears?

??????

[Earth_First]

2. Next it will be all GLBT literature...then Orwell and Vonnegut...

finally all books, upon when the fascist takeover will be far too near complete to correct itself.

[realisticphish]

3. on those grounds

couldn't we pull the bible?

(not that I want to)

"They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em"

[VegasWolf]

7. Banning the bible is a great idea. If famous literature can be banned,

certainly a book full of fairy tales can be too.

[LiberalEsto]

10. In the Bible, when that guy throws his daughters

to the crowd at his door, and lets them abuse the poor girls to death,
doesn't that count as pedophilia, child rape, sexual abuse, etc?

I say it's time to start a Ban the Bible movement

[Ally McLesbian]

21. I am with you

The Death Book is no longer welcome where I am.

[LostinVA]

32. That didn't happen -- Lot offered his daughters

But the offer was not accepted.

[Bridget Burke]

34. Yes, Lot's daughters lived & escaped Sodom's destruction.

But they feared they would never become mothers. So they got the old man drunk so he'd have sex with them.

Isn't that a more wholesome story?

[redqueen]

55. That's *real* family values right there!

:puke:

[Lochloosa]

73. Ok and you argument is that he offered and was not accepted

so everything is forgiven

[LostinVA]

89. WTF gives you the right to judge me like that?

I'm GAY. I've actually been fired for being gay. Please, tell me when I said "all is forgiven." I was just commenting that the poster was mistaken in his Biblical plotline. I HAD no argument. I have no idea WTF you think I did.

Goddess, deliver me from hair-trigger assumists on DU, because there sure as hell are a lot of them.

[Exiled in America]

96. Hear, hear. (nt)

[KitSileya]

79. But didn't he send out his servant girls instead?

And found them chopped up outside his door in the morning? Or was that another guy?

[LostinVA]

88. That wasn't Lot...

[KitSileya]

90. But it is a story from the same book.

It's like the other Isak - God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isak, but there's a story in the Old Testament about a man who offers to sacrifice the first person he meets from his household for victory in a battle, and his favorite daughter rushes out to greet him when he comes home. God didn't stop that sacrifice. Many of the favorite stories from the Bible have much darker parallell stories that are less known, but are in the book nonetheless.

I think rape and dismemberment is at least just as bad as pedophilia. So I think those who suggest the Bible is as bad as Lolita is correct. And neither should be banned. Banning books is wrong.

[VegasWolf]

4. What a bunch of fanatics!!! I guess it wasn't obscene by standards

50 years ago. We as a society are devolving rapidly, soon we will be back to the chimpanzee equivalent stage thanks to Bush and friends. This country is controlled by puritans.

[On the Road]

9. It *Was* Judged Obscene 50 Years Ago

Nabokov had to get a French pornographic press to publish the original version.

The subject matter is pretty common nowadays. Child molestation, not to mention incest and rape, are almost a cliche in modern novels. The "dark secrets" of a heroine's childhood are often described in much more graphic terms.

What I think still bothers people about Lolita is that, despite the fact that Humbert Humbert is a thoroughly nasty character, it's written from his point of view. Middlebrows are accustomed to identifying with the narrator. That's what makes it unsettling. The same factor contributes to its greatness.

[VegasWolf]

11. Yes, I know. But it has been in libraries for all the years I have been

visiting libraries. And in those days, married couples could not even sleep in the same beds on television shows.

[On the Road]

71. Society is a Lot More Liberal Today About Sex in General,

But there's much more awareness of pedophilia and a stronger desire to protect children. Which is good, but a lot of people aren't using their common sense.

There are tons of popular novels which contain scenes of incest and child rape. But Lolita is notorious. There is great uneasiness about anything other than pure, explicit condemnation.

[enlightenment]

43. When it came to sex,

the Puritans were a whole lot less up-tight than today's hysterically shrieking right. Long winter nights and no central heating make interesting bed-fellows . . .

[VegasWolf]

64. LOL! Could you point me to a reference for Puritanical Sexual Mores,

all that I've heard indicates that they were pretty tight, figuratively of course. They may have had a lot of missionary position sex, just to keep warm of course. But I never heard of them swinging from the rafters.

:)
:toast:

[kskiska]

72. Here's something:

(snip)

On a less religious note, Morgan shows that “the Puritans were a much earthier lot than their modern critics have imagined.” John Winthrop's Journal from his Harvard days contained many of the more explicit passages from Cavalier and Elizabethan love poems. Most of the 17th-century Puritans were farmers, too, and made frequent humorous allusions to the reproductive lives of their barnyard animals. John Cotton scornfully condemned so-called Spiritual, or Platonic, marriages; a good sexual life was necessary to the Christian marriage, he preached, for “The Holy Spirit saith It is not good that man should be alone.”5

In the early 1700’s, it is true, the Puritan system for regulating sexual behavior was breaking down. Penalties had been stern and punishment swift for sexual offenses during the prior century, but there were relatively few violations. By 1730, though, there were many prosecutions for adultery and fornication. Jonathan Edwards railed against the “night walking,” the “taverning,” the “lewd practices,” and the “frolicks” increasingly found among the young of Massachusetts. In towns such as Hingham and Watertown, the proportion of new brides who were already pregnant climbed from 10 percent in 1680 to 40 percent by 1730.6 The cause was largely due to declining church involvement. In 1767 Hingham, for example, the proportion of premarital conceptions was only 18 percent if at least one partner was a church member; but 30 percent if neither was.7 Indeed, one impulse behind the famed Great Awakening of the 1740’s was to bring apostate Puritan youth back to the faith and to urge them to forswear sexual sin. Many teens and young adults did respond, through charismatic conversion and worship that quickly worried their elders for other reasons.8 In any case, even in this time of religious decay and some moral disorder, sex remained firmly attached in expectation and practice to marriage and to marital procreation.

http://www.profam.org/pub/fia/fia_1705.htm

[MetaTrope]

84. Explicit porn, barnyard animals and extramarital sex?

Sounds like the Republicans today...

[enlightenment]

92. Here's a couple of books that may shed some light --

The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England
by Harry S. Stout
(Oxford, 1986)

Sexual Revolution in Early America
by Richard Godbeer
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)

Don't look for them swinging from the rafters -- they tried to be uptight, but reality got in the way (ask yourself why Hester Prynne got in trouble in the first place . . .)

My personal favorite is the Puritan "bundling board" -- a literal board placed between a courting couple as they lay in bed (to stay warm). A considerable number of "bundling babies" resulted.

[sarcasmo]

82. Zealots is a much better word. A whole country of CRAZY Zealots.

[On the Road]

5. It's Not Really Full of Explicit Material

By today's standards, the sexual description in Lolita is indirect and quaint. It does deal with pedophilia, which is undoubtedly causing the furor.

I love this novel -- like a lot of great, it's bizarre, unpredictable, and at time uncanny. Lolita is a prime example of how how literature can transcend bare subject matter. It really threw a wrench into obscenity procedings in the 50s.

[boobooday]

6. Lolita is a great book

It's really about what telling the story does to the narrator . . .

[catmother]

8. OMG -- give me a break. i was about 13 or 14 when i read the

book and when the movie came out i saw it (still very young). i didn't know what pedophilia was back then but i knew humbert humbert was a detestable character. was it james mason who played the part? every time i saw him in a movie after that i had to think about humbert. it did not have any effect on me -- actually i thought some of it was quite funny like "the hayes woman, the old cow". back in my early teens i read many books of that nature, i.e., tropic of cancer, lady chatterly's lover.

i don't know what they think they'll accomplish taking the book away. none of those books made me sexually active.

[VegasWolf]

17. Good for you!! Sounds like my early years reading too!!! plus SciFi.

I was a bad little boy.

:toast:

[Hardrada]

19. And then there was "Candy" which was quite erotic

and also satirical. I still have a copy of that one from 1966 but it never caused me to be a sex fiend. These RW people are such ridiculous prudes. But sex = Original Sin to them.

[VegasWolf]

22. Yes Candy was great!! I read it at 13 and kept it under my mattress!!

:toast:

[Hardrada]

24. I've got it stashed next to some Anais Nin naughty books.

I don't think they ever tried to ban her.

[Tesha]

85. They probably can't pronounce her name...

> I've got it stashed next to some Anais Nin naughty books.
>
> I don't think they ever tried to ban her.

They probably can't pronounce her name and are embarrassed
at getting caught trying and failing.

Tesha

[DrunkenMaster]

37. Good Grief!

Oh, yeah, "Candy" is sexariffic! I love the creative use of terms like "honeypot" and "lambpit".

[VegasWolf]

39. Yep! Candy was Dandy!!! nt

[lumpy]

42. Lady Chatterly's Lover was banned

from import during the 40's. It made the rounds when I was in highschool, never-the-less. Forever Amber, Frenchman's Creek were other frowned-upon hits with teens. However, the book that really consumed my interest was Dry Guillotine (re.the torture of Devils Island). It was in the school library, guaranteed to give any kid the horrors.

[catmother]

45. well i was in high school from 54-58. i know i read it back then.

don't remember how i got my copy.

[WindRavenX]

12. oh fuck this

Don't like it? DON'T READ IT.

These goddamn fascists are so tiring!!

[YOY]

13. I'm assuming they don't much like "Justine" by De Sade as well?

Regardless of how creepy the writer it's still a great book.

[NYC]

14. Lolita will stay on adult fiction shelves.

...On a 3-2 vote, the County Commission determined "Lolita" will stay on the adult fiction shelves, but they also ordered the county attorney to come up with his determination on whether "Lolita" is indecent for minors...

...The attorney will recommend to the commissioners whether he thinks the book is unsuitable for minors. They still would have to vote to determine if "Lolita" remains on the shelf or is hidden behind a desk...

[catmother]

23. i didn't get my copy from the library. i seem to remember reading

the book in paperback. if the "powers that be" had tried to stop me from reading the book, that would have made me more determined. i would have gotten it somehow.

[Hardrada]

26. My grandmother expressed some misgivings when she saw

I had that book but since I was going to attend a Lutheran College, it was OK. This was in 1962.

[catmother]

33. i'm not sure what year i read it. but i was in catholic school until

1956 (high school). they finally told me mother to take me out or they would expel me. so off i went to the public high school which was where i wanted to be. i do know that i was quite young reading these books. don't even know if my parents noticed. they were going through a divorce and were concerned with other things.

[VegasWolf]

38. Yes, they threatened to expell me from a Catholic high school. I spent

my junior and senior at public school. I was so far ahead that I didn't even need to crack my books once during those last two years. But, I simply couldn't take the constant droning coming from the Catholic schools. I wanted out bad. The difference was that my parents stayed together "for the kids." Bad decision.

[catmother]

41. i know. i started public school halfway through my sophmore

year and the same thing happened. i was so far ahead too. so in english class i had julius caesar twice -- once in catholic then in public which was okay because i liked "ceasar".

don't know how old you are but i'm 64 -- back in those days parents stayed together for the kids -- bad decision. i know when my parents were together there was constant arguing and the same with some of my friends whose parents stayed together.

[VegasWolf]

48. Yes, exactly,

I am about 8 years younger than you and would lay awake at night listening to my parents scream. Really did us a disservice by staying together. I always figured that it was the smart ones that read erotica!! and I am not referring to works like "Lolita" !!!


:toast:

[catmother]

60. i have a close friend who is 48. his whole life his parents have

been fighting (4 kids) -- actually violent at times. he always says "pizza plates were flying". his parents are still together. his mom just turned 70 and they all went out for her birthday. he stayed over night at his parents and the next morning his mom was acting strange and he asked her what was wrong. she said "after the holidays your father and i are separating". he feels it would be the best thing for both of them, but i haven't had a chance to ask him if it's really happening.

actually i remember even get my hands on some of my parents' books. i would sneak a read here and there.

[Gman]

57. Same thing happened to me my Jr and Sr years coming from

Catholic school to public school. Things we studied and did when I was a freshman in Catholic school we did as seniors in public school. I was way ahead too and also never cracked another book. Didn't want to be there either.

[SupplyConcerns]

15. I guess that's why Bush is sealing his records from the public.

What they reveal about his actions as President is too obscene for the public to handle!

[Warren Stupidity]

16. Perhaps it should be replaced with

Reading Lolita in Tehran.

A guide to how to keep the enlightenment alive inside a despotic theocracy.

[alfredo]

46. I second that

[kskiska]

18. There's nothing "sexually explicit" in the book at all

and not one dirty word. Apparently, these people haven't read the book. It's beautifully written.

[jobycom]

20. Good. Maybe that'll make more people read it. It's one of the best

novels in English.

[Hardrada]

28. And read more Nabokov

and just plain read more!!

[bicentennial_baby]

40. i agree absolutely

my #1 favorite novel

[steelyboo]

68. Same here

The book can be read as either as dramatic or comedic and be every bit as enjoyable. The rethugs can go strip naked and run backwards through a cornfield or something, just keep their damn hands off the books!!!:mad:

[zbdent]

27. Teen sex novel pulled - also covers teen suicide

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . . .

[Hardrada]

29. Didn't Newt Gingrinch write a book some sexually explicit

(fucking) activity in it or was I hallucinating that? It seems like the repubes have been channeling their sexual frustration into lit for some time now.

[judy]

30. Outrageous!!

Vladimir Nabokov is one of the giants of World Literature, and "Lolita", far from being a novel condoning pedophilia, is also a symbolic masterpiece of the relationship between Old Europe (Humbert) and Young America (Lolita). It doesn't contain any sexually explicit scenes. There have been studies, classes, taught on it in many Ivy League universities and elsewhere. Stanley Kubrick filmed it, not Russ Meyer.

Indecence is really in this case in the mind of the beholder: Terry Blaes has a dirty mind!

[merwin]

31. So Lolita is MORE obscene now than it was 50 years ago?

Damn... we've regressed a long ways.

[QuettaKid]

36. Bears, bibles, kids. . . .

you all might like this thread as well.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x4634796

[DrunkenMaster]

35. Someone Hasn't Read the Book

Whoever is behind this nonsense is an absolute idiot -- there is NO graphic sex anywhere in the novel "Lolita". NONE.

[Jim__]

44. Exactly. They're lying again.

"Lolita" is a famous novel full of pages and pages of sexually explicit material about pedophilia.

Horseshit! There is no sexually explicit material in Lolita.

[Nutmegger]

47. BOOK CENSORSHIP

doesn't work!

[hedgehog]

49. I've come to a conclusion a lot of people won't like.

It's not the pornography per se that's the problem. Most people will look once out of curiosity and then move on. But I have to wonder about those who keep going back, regardless of whether the person involved is a right wing preacher or the most liberal libertarian atheist. How can they enjoy looking at that stuff and maintain enough empathy for any other human being to have a real sexual relationship? We won't solve this problem by going after dirty pictures. We have to face up to the fact that the real problem is that some of us treat sex as something dirty that must be hidden away and some of us insist on treating people as objects. If we can't address those two issues, taking away all the dirty pictures won't do a damn thing.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

59. Ahem.

"How can they enjoy looking at that stuff and maintain enough empathy for any other human being to have a real sexual relationship?"

It's a well guarded secret: all you have to do is not be a puritanical asshole.

Once you achieve that, it becomes easy to do the two things above simultaneously.

[bettyellen]

70. well keep wondering about your uncle, your brother, the boy next door and

the grocer, because they all have had stroke books at some point in their lives.

[schmuls]

50. Ha! I'm thinking of the book, Reading Lolita in Tehran... where a

teacher and a group of students have to read Western novels in secret. Truth is stranger than fiction...

[VegasWolf]

51. Starting to seem the same in Bush's Amerikkka? We'll have to have

underground reading rooms.


:toast:

[Warren Stupidity]

63. Me too.

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2060131&mesg_id=2060200


up above.

[Javaman]

52. Hey Terry Blaes, I think you are right!

we never ever want to put thought provoking ideas into kids heads, that might lead them to question things. Whew, I'm so glad for people like Terry. :)

HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY :sarcasm:

This woman is an imbecile.

[xchrom]

53. here we go again...

whe do we get to stop being polite about this ''culture war''?

and when do we start showing up in front of these mega churches the way they show up in front of clinics?

[Book Lover]

54. Thereby shooting up the book's online sales

C'mon, people, you should be giving every kid that actually sits down and reads a book a fiver.

[slackmaster]

67. I recently bought a DVD of Stanley Kubrick's 1962 movie adaptation

James Mason and Sue Lyon, with a little Shelley Winters and Peter Sellers action.

It's not quite Nabokov's novel (which is one of my favorite books BTW) but it's great to see a remastered version. The cinematography is spectacular.

I watched it with my girlfriend, who has two teenage daughters. She loved it but squirmed at the thought of either of her girls seeing it.

[WinkyDink]

56. I read this a long time ago, but i don't recall "explicit" material.

Maybe I'm jaded!

[callous taoboy]

58. It. Is. Art. I did not find it erotic as much as disturbing and

exquisitely good writing. One of the finest novels of our times.

[laylah]

61. My grandmother was a

librarian until they retired her when she was 88 years old, LLLLLLLLLLLLONG before a degree in Library Science was needed. I remember wanting to read "Forever Amber" after having seen the movie (I LOVED :loveya: Cornell Wilde!). I was about 14 at the time and asked her where I could find it. She kept it, and other "racey" novels to include "Lolita" and "Lady Chatterly's Lover" under the counter. One had to ask for them! LOL! But that was in the mid-60's and she provided them when asked for.

Jenn

[Borgnine]

62. Over my dead body.

I don't even care for the novel, but censorship and banning books of any kind riles up my blood almost more than anything.

[Hardrada]

65. When I had an open book shop

I thought of making a list of some blah books I had that never sold in hopes of getting some big Xian group to ban them. I never got around to it but should have! They would have flown out the door.

[Dr Fate]

66. You are either Australian or a German refugee. This is a gentile's house -

...you'd better run along."

[leesa]

74. How pathetic. Have these people nothing of more substance on their little

minds?

[kskiska]

75. When I was a teenager in the 50s, Peyton Place was considered

the epitome of eroticism. It was very explicit and had something for everyone – small-town slutty girls, alcoholism, rape, incest, adultery. Even the author, Grace Metalius, was attacked as an unkempt single mother who drank and wore jeans. The book is still on library shelves and the movie is on TV occasionally. Mia Farrow starred in the TV series. Lolita was much too highbrow a book for average Americans.

[fshrink]

76. Religious measures, because that's just

what it is, always wind up fostering the opposite of what they preach and attempt to impose on others. The return of the repressed in a single individual is more powerful than the power the entire crowd of Axis II assholes have managed to accrue, mostly through theft, over the last few years. The hard part is to put up with the bottomless stupidity of the arguments and the noise that accompany them.

[tirechewer]

77. Oh please.....

I read that book when I was 11 years old. My mother didn't believe in censorship and let me read what I wanted. The book belonged to my older sister and I read her books pretty much interchangeably with mine. It made no impact on me whatsoever. I mostly didn't know what the author was talking about and promptly forgot most of it.

I am not a serial killer and I have not been convicted of a felony and I was not shriveled up and turned to dust. Nobody made a big deal out of my having read the book, so I didn't either.

That is what people who try to censor things will never understand. The more you try to keep a book or movie or a work of art away from people the harder they will try to get it, because human beings are curious and the more they hear about something the more they want to experience it for themselves. Reading or seeing an activity doesn't mean you are going to rush out and emulate it. Not reading about an activity wouldn't stop you from performing it if that's the way you are bent.

I have no love for pedophiles or pedophilia, but I don't think that reading about a pedophile creates one. Wing nuts who like to control everyone else's thoughts seem to be missing a basic reasoning chip that would tell them, if they thought at all, that people like thinking for themselves and are capable of doing so. As I have said before and will say again, I think they should all sit down and shut up.:crazy:

[mongo]

93. Welcome to DU

Nice well-reasoned post.

[tirechewer]

97. Thanks

Hello, and thanks for the welcome and the compliment.:hi:

[The Straight Story]

99. I wonder how the police/government are able to handle investigations

and juries testimony on such things as pedophilia and not turn into one.

Maybe they want us to ban trials (where avg joe hears details about it far worse than a fictional work), and then ban people in government who go out and spend 8+ hours a day immersed in kiddie porn trying to catch people, etc and so on....

[primavera]

100. Ah, but you're far worse than a pedophile...

... you're a free-thinking individual with leftist sympathies! What could be more terrifying than that?

[sarcasmo]

80. Kick and Nom another connection between Bush and the Nazis.

Let the book burning begin.

[onager]

81. Kinda good to see this one still riling up the morons.

Nabokov himself wrote that 3 types of books could not be published in the United States, Land o' Big Freedom and One Nation Under Gawd:

1. A novel about an atheist who lives a long, successful life and dies peacefully in bed at a ripe old age.

2. A novel about a mixed-race American couple (black and white) who marry, have children and live happily together for the rest of their lives.

The third can't-be-published novel was the one he actually got published...eventually. Lolita

(on edit: I don't know how anyone can read that novel and come away thinking it "promotes pedophilia" or some such BS. Jebus, did any of the latest critics actually READ the damn thing? Everybody ends up destroyed by Humbert's obsessions, including himself.

Dolores Haze becomes a pregnant teen and dies in childbirth. Humbert dies. Clare Quilty and Mrs. Haze-The-Cow die violently.

If your criteria is whether the characters get properly punished for their "sins," Lolita is probably a more "moral" book than the Old Testament.

And of course, it's beautifully written, even when the writing is about horrible topics. Somebody smarter than me once defined that as "art," IIRC.)

[Laughing Mirror]

83. Did Lolita really die in childbirth?

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

[tomg]

104. Yes she does. That comes out

in The Forward by John Ray, Jr. No one ever reads the Forward and it is one of the biggest jokes in this wonderfully comic novel. "Mrs. 'Richard F. Schiller' dies in childbed giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest." What an opening line: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo.Lee.Ta"

Actually, if the puritans really want to sink their teeth into something that will totally floor them, they should try Ada.

[Rich Hunt]

86. that's ridiculous

They're not targetting the book because it's racy. It's pretty tame, actually, compared to some of the other stuff that might be on the shelves.

They're targetting it because of its status as a great novel. In doing so, they sensationalize it and misrepresent what it's about - notice how they call it 'racy', that's not the point of the book.

[noonwitch]

87. Banning the book vs. keeping it out of kids' hands

The library shouldn't remove the book from their shelves. However, having read "Lolita" myself during my college years, I would agree with anyone who said that it was totally inappropriate reading for anyone under 18 without parental permission.
Libraries can have shelves of books that they don't allow children to have access to, but that adults do have access to. Banning a book is a knee-jerk reaction to something that is an issue of genuine concern for parents.

[DrunkenMaster]

91. are you kidding me???

If some kid under 18 read "Lolita" and understood a third of that text with its complex narrative and layered literay allusions they should be PRAISED.

As if 18 is some kind of magic number....c'mon.

[mongo]

94. I agree with you

BUT -- it is still up to the parents to decide what is appropriate for their kids.

[noonwitch]

95. 18 is the age of majority-parents can decide for those younger

Personally, I agree about the reading skills required to understand "Lolita". I also doubt that many people under 18 would be interested in reading it.

But you can't win these kind of issues by denigrating those who are concerned for what their children are exposed to, because they are right to care about such things. Their motives and methods are two different things. Parents should be aware of what their kids are reading, watching on tv, what video games they are playing, etc. A library is supported by everyone's tax dollars, liberals and conservatives. The organization needs to find a way to please both sides-limiting access to those under 18 is the best way for them to do so.

[DrunkenMaster]

102. absolutely NOT

Who decides what material is "inappropriate" for young readers? Does that include classic material like "Lolita" as well as "Huck Finn" (all that terrible racism!) and "Slaughterhouse 5" (which was publicly burned by a school district in PA)? Who makes the decision -- the State???

The fact is that it is NOT the job of the library OR the State to regulate what your children can access if that regulation interferes with free speech: it is YOUR job to monitor what material and media your children consume. If you want to intellectually neuter your children by insisting they confine their intellectual activities to pap and crap, you are responsible for enforcing it.

[car]

98. Let People Decide

Let the people decide for themselves what they read and don't read. If it is a matter of children/young adults, then the parents need to educate themselves on what the book is about and then decide.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

101. Good idea!

It'll send book sales soaring.

[anotherdrew]

103. right - no one in america has ever had sex under 18

and anyone who did was a criminal, right.... as if.

our high schools must be filled with pedophilic couples!