Our Enduring Values Revisited by Michael Gorman

Author:Michael Gorman [Gorman, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LAN025000 Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General
ISBN: 9780838913062
Publisher: American Library Association
Published: 2015-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Failure to abide by the prescription to install filters that block such depictions is punished by withdrawal of federal money available through the Library Services and Technology Act, Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and on the Universal Service discount program known as the E-rate (Public Law 106–554).

Thus we have moral panic enshrined in a law written in language that a country lawyer could take apart in seconds. Let us disregard for the moment that children and minors have First Amendment rights—and all filters will block constitutionally protected speech for minors, as well as potentially block that speech for adults—to contemplate, for the moment, a mind-set that thinks sixteen-year-olds need protection from having an interest in nudity and sex—an interest that legislators call “prurient” but that will seem to most to be both inevitable and normal. The filters mandated by these laws are devices as ineffective as they are philosophically offensive.

Before going on to discuss filters as such, let us see what they are designed to achieve. The central concern of those who genuinely wish to protect children (as opposed to lifelong censors who are using the Internet as the latest weapon to achieve their social aims) is that children may see or read images and texts that are morally harmful. It is very easy to find stuff online, advertently or inadvertently, that is aesthetically repulsive, inherently sordid, or exploitative of humans. None of those constitutes an offense to morality—unless, that is, you believe that your own morality is or should be universal. The latter is only acceptable to those who use statements beginning “The American people believe . . . ,” thinking that they are equipped to decide what the majority of this vast, diverse nation believes on every issue. I do not eat meat. Pictures of factory farms and of meat being cooked are repulsive to me. Does that mean that I should do everything in my power to stop others (who may or may not eat meat) from seeing those pictures? That may seem absurd, but is it really any more absurd than me seeking to stop people from seeing pictures of people engaged in sexual variations that do not appeal to me?

Then there is the question of the assumed superiority of those who would censor. The idea is that such people can read texts or view images that will have no effect on them but will be “harmful” to other, presumably more suggestible, people. Someone once defined a censor as someone who does not want you to know or read what he knows or has read. Could it be that the effects of texts and images on the individual psyche are simply incalculable—as unpredictable as any other effect on individual behavior? Anyone who is honest with herself will acknowledge that some sexual or violent images and texts stay in the mind for years and exercise power over that mind. These are images and texts that have been ignored or forgotten in minutes by millions of viewers and readers but, for some reason, hold sway in one mind for a lifetime.

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