Another Wednesday, another vicious attack from Dennis Taylor.
Let’s address the lies first.
Another Wednesday, another vicious attack from Dennis Taylor. Let’s address the lies first.
I never said that no library was worth supporting. There are libraries in this country that do not allow tax dollars to be used for purposes of viewing pornography. A few of these libraries do not have the Internet. Some have only filtered terminals. Some have all terminals in full sight of the librarians, and a “tap on the shoulder” policy, and a policy that pornography is prohibited. Those libraries might be worth supporting, especially if they needed tax dollars to buy books. Ours is not.
Secondly, the fact is that Measure B on the March 2 ballot does more than maintain existing funding. It increases funding, and uses said funding for hours and “books, materials, and computer technology,” as stated in your sample ballot, Mr. Taylor. Did you not bother to read it? Why am I not surprised?
Next, I do not shun accountability. I am accountable for any children in my house, and for my children wherever they might be. Unfortunately, our library, to date, has refused to be responsible for the means of distribution under its control.
Next we can address the imputations. Mr. Taylor says that the problem is not the library providing pornography. He says the fault lies with the criminal, the law, and the courts. He goes on to suggest that the rapist “needed his manhood smashed under the Liberty Bell.”
There is a tiny bit of truth in Mr. Taylor’s hyperbole. The rapist needs to be punished. However, cruel and unusual punishment is prohibited in the Bill of Rights by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. (Perhaps you have heard of it, Mr. Taylor? Since you claim to be a Constitutionalist, I mean?)
The courts certainly should have imprisoned Brian McCutcheon (the man accused in a celebrated rape case involving an 8-year-old girl at a Philadelphia library) for his first attempted rape. Unfortunately, the law and the courts let him walk. I hope everyone remembers this when they vote for judicial candidates and presidential candidates. We need judges who will protect children from rapists, not judges who will rewrite the law to suit their starry-eyed vision of utopia. Obviously, Mr. Taylor, you will be voting republican this election for that reason alone.
The underlying assumption in Mr. Taylor’s malevolent screed is that pornography does no harm. Why should the library bother to prohibit what the ALA calls “information”? After all, as our librarians like to say, “we serve a diverse population,” and certain elements of that population find pornography entertaining.
Does it matter that possession and distribution of child pornography is a felony, that obscenity is illegal, that distributing harmful matter to minors is a misdemeanor in California? Why should our library adhere to these old-fashioned, ridiculous, Victorian prejudices?
After all, the Internet has been around for 10 years now, eight in the library, and have we seen any increase in sex crimes?
This is a good question. Obviously, it would be immoral to do a controlled large-scale experiment on this: take 2000 12-year-old boys, randomly assign them to a porn-exposure group and a no-porn exposure group, check back at intervals to see how many of each group become rapists and child molesters.
No, alas, we are stuck with epidemiological and crime data. Reports are not encouraging.
Online porn has led to an increase in sex crimes being committed by children in Australia and the United Kingdom. The child-at-risk assessment unit at Canberra has recorded a significant rise in the number of children aged younger than 10 who are committing sexual offenses, including “oral sex and forced intercourse,” against other children.
The health unit says that in the mid-1990s, it was seeing as few as three children a year who were engaged in “sexually-abusive behavior.” By 2000 the number had risen to 28, and toward the end of 2003, unit member and social worker Cassandra Tinning told a child abuse conference in Sydney, she expects to have seen 70 children in that category during 2003 alone.
“A third of indecent assaults are carried out by adolescents,” said Mr. Terry Jones, who now runs the Internet Paedophilia Training Awareness Consultancy in the UK. “The more that young, impressionable people get access to this kind of material, the more the problem will grow.”
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and a former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every Friday.
