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Should We Be Allowed to Watch Porn in Public Libraries?
A Seattle woman was harshly chastised by her local library staff after she became embroiled in an argument over watching porn on a public library computer. Oh, no, she wasn't watching porn -- she was asking the dude next to her to take that "Private Browsing" session somewhere actually private, and the librarians not-so-kindly asked her -- and her three young children, who were present -- to mind their own damn business.
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Where was this library when we were 13 and had to get by on their "Loremasters of the Amazon" issue of National Geographic?
You see, Seattle -- along with many other library systems across the land -- have a longstanding tradition of allowing citizens who are unable to afford a high-speed connection to come in and watch Coach, My Ass Is the Stadium: Volume 15, arguing that this isn't so much about allowing people to load up their spank bank as it is about preventing censorship.
On one hand, we understand that some people do look at porn for legitimate reasons, like if you're doing your thesis on Sasha Grey's oeuvre. On the other hand, if the legion of unemployed, bearded men all writing their dissertations on Blow-Job Deli 39 -- on computers underneath a banner of the Berenstain Bears extolling the joys of the Dewey Decimal System, no less -- represent a cross-section of the American mind, who's studying all the science and literature?