Editorial: Library porn? For children?

Friday, May 20, 2005 | 5:22 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 21 - 22, 2005

Suppose a ballot question were to ask: "Shall pornographic book stores in Nevada be allowed to admit grade school children and sell or rent to them sexually explicit material, including DVDs that portray extreme violence against women?" It's ridiculous, of course, to suppose that such a question would even make it on the ballot, even in Las Vegas, where voters laugh it off when their mayor accepts an invitation to be a celebrity photographer for Playboy magazine.

Yet the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District recently allowed a 7-year-old boy to use his library card to check out an R-rated DVD titled, "Crying Freeman: Complete Collection." A review of the DVD on Amazon.com says the animated film includes "violence, violence against women, rape, torture, ethnic stereotypes, extensive nudity, explicit sexual situations."

The boy was with his grandmother, who is his legal guardian, when he checked out the DVD at Sunrise Library. She said she saw the DVD's illustrated cover at the time but did not think anything about it because it wasn't suggestive of the contents. At home, however, she was shocked when she walked into a room and saw her grandson and other children watching its violent and sexually explicit images. Only then did she flip the DVD's cover and see a suggestive photo and a tiny printed warning that it was for viewers 17 and older.

The grandmother contacted Sunrise Library officials to express her concern. When we learned of their response, it was time for us to be shocked. They offered her a "request for reconsideration" form to register her objection to such material being on the shelves, but told her there was nothing they could do to police children's choices. Las Vegas Sun reporter David Kihara checked with Robb Morss, the acting deputy director of the library district, to see if that was true. "We don't take the place of the parent," Morss said. He added that it's the district's policy to allow children to check out R-rated material and that it's up to parents or guardians, not library employees, to supervise their selections. He also said that in the past year an estimated 12 reconsideration forms have been turned in, but he couldn't think of a single item that had been remove d from the shelves in response.

In our view, such garbage as "Crying Freeman" shouldn't be on library shelves in the first place. We believe taxpayers fund libraries so there can be free and open access to educational materials, not to pornography. We also believe that when any questionable material is being offered for check-out by a child, there should be a shared responsibility between the library and parent or guardian. Most adults would never dream that their neighborhood library is a place where their kids could be exposed to pornography. At the very least they should have their attention drawn to such material about to go home in their child's hand. The library district's policy on this matter is outrageous. Its board will be shamefully irresponsible if it doesn't order a change.

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