The Manley Arts.

LEGAL judgments; UNITED States. Supreme Court; UNITED States politics & government; LIBRARIES; INTERNET pornography

This article focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the right of the federal government to uphold the right of the federal government to make the filtering of the children's-room computers a requirement for libraries that receive federal grant. The decision came in as a major setback to the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom. Librarians asserted that in upholding the constitutionality of filtering the Internet, the Supreme Court was now validating U.S. President George W. Bush's conservative social agenda. It would appear that in the case of keeping children away from Internet pornography, it is the library profession, not the Supreme Court which has distanced itself from mainstream. When librarians were blasting the Supreme Court as a band of censors, parents from Maine to California were thanking the justices for protecting their children from the excesses of sex on the Internet. The profession of a librarian preaches intellectual freedom but does not tolerate its practice within their own ranks. Librarians imbued with common sense and good political judgment are afraid to espouse even a moderate position that advocates the limited use of filters.