I’ve known a lot of librarians over the years. In fact, I married one. For the most part, they’re an idealistic sort. They preserve the culture, bring people and information together. Right now, because some of them want to do that wholeheartedly and others don’t, they’re engaged in a civil war.
That battle has always been going on at some level. When Madonna’s Sex was published some years ago, some library staffs condemned it, while others bought it and added it to non-circulating, by-request-only shelves. Every week we learn of cases in which conservatives demand removal of specific titles from the shelves of public libraries. Sometimes they get their way. Sometimes they don’t.
The Internet is bringing this conflict to a head. Allowed free access to library computers, mere children, properly motivated and with the necessary access information, can see and learn all sorts of things about the human body and its sexuality. And there’s the rub, if you will pardon the expression.
Mark Y. Herring, of Oklahoma Baptist University, writes in the May 1, 1998, issue of Library Journal, “If a great work can inspire courage, greatness and magnanimity, then bad ones can also provoke lust, rage, and parvanimity ….” (I would love to tell you what parvanimity means. I looked it up in the American Heritage Dictionary and the Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, and I can’t find it anywhere. If anyone knows what parvanimity means, please let me know.)
Another librarian, writes in that same issue, “We don’t put snuff films in the video section of the library.” Then she makes her point: “Why allow material offensive to the reasonable and rational person into the library just because it comes on the Internet?”
Cheryl Banick’s question, in effect, is “Why should anyone of any age have access to sex information just because they want to?” My question is, “Why shouldn’t they?”
I was a kid once, as interested in sex as anyone else my age–which is to say, not very. I remember that Michael Lowenthall and I met behind his sofa when we were six years old and rubbed our penises together. At the time I felt heat flashes that virtually took my breath away. But you know something? We soon grew tired of that and never bothered doing it again. We had other things to do. We climbed fences, chased each other across Newark’s garage roofs, ran through people’s gardens, explored the neighborhood.
Four or five years later, I discovered my father’s treasure trove of pornography. These were photos, many of them taken by him, mostly of my mother and he, in some cases the two of them together in sexual acts. Then, again, I felt the flush, the breathlessness. I’m sure I sprouted an erection, but I knew nothing of masturbation.
Those photos remained in that same cabinet even after I left for college at age 18, but I perused them only twice more, briefly, curious about the secret play my parents were involved in; also, even more, the strange things that I felt in my body at observing them. But I wasn’t yet ready for sex, and soon became caught up in other matters. I was, in a sense, educating myself in ideal fashion, sating my curiosity.
What’s wrong with young people sating their curiosity about sex? How dare any educated person equate that to a snuff film in which someone is murdered?
Here’s the line in the sand. Is sex–the knowledge, portrayal and practice of it–good, positive, and celebrative? Or is it to be equated with “rage, and parvanimity,” with “snuff films” and that which is “offensive to the reasonable and rational person”? Ultimately, we are not only defending the First Amendment, but the rightness and naturalness of the body and its sexuality.
Don’t let the spin doctors succeed in their deceit. This isn’t about kids–have you seen any serious efforts to protect youngsters from movies about chain saw killings and other depictions of stomach-churning violence? Sex is being vilified here. That’s what this conflict is all about, and whether or not our children will someday escape the sexual hypocrisy and shame our generation has borne.