Pawlick Challenges ACLU at Panel Discussion

Why Did ACLU Violate Rights of Voters in Massachusetts?

By Ed Oliver
May 2002

The publisher of Massachusetts News, Ed Pawlick, brought his conservative point of view to a panel discussion about free speech and censorship sponsored by the Walpole library last month.

As fate would have it, the conservative Pawlick was seated next to the liberal Susan Flannery, a board member of the Massachusetts Chapter of the ACLU. Others on the panel were Keith Fiels, Director of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and Tom Glynn, Editor of the Walpole Times.

ACLU

Before the program began, Pawlick queried why a political organization such as the ACLU was invited. Flannery denied that the ACLU is a political organization.

An audience member, Greg Sabine from Brockton, reacted to Flannery's denial by standing up to read a list of the ACLU's political positions. Sabine, a schoolteacher at Thayer Academy in Braintree, pointed out that the ACLU is in favor of:

Forcing school children to undergo sex education.
Giving children total access to porn on the Internet.
Keeping partial birth abortions legal.
Legalizing child pornography.
Legalizing drugs.
Legalizing prostitution.
Providing abortion on demand.
Suing Christians who express their faith in public.


The ACLU opposes:

Laws requiring minors to get parental consent for abortion.
Reporting infectious diseases like HIV.
Education vouchers and home schooling.
Teaching the benefits of sexual abstinence in public schools.
Establishment of government ethics committees.
Installing filtering software in libraries to protect children from Internet pornography.
Legalizing voluntary school prayer.
Allowing religious displays on public property.

Flannery glared at the man, but did not respond.

The panel discussed several topics. Below are some areas where Pawlick contributed commentary.

Book Banning In Schools

During the program, moderator Michael Iwanowicz raised the topic of book banning. He mentioned a recent story coming out of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where a book with a homosexual theme titled The Drowning of Stephan Jones was taken off the shelves of the public schools after a parent complained.

"Who makes that sort of decision, that a particular book that's been in use in a particular school system, ought not to be there?"

Keith Fiels answered that where public libraries are concerned, Massachusetts law says it is the local public library board of trustees who decides. With schools, it is less clear. He said a parent has a "certain amount of control" over what their child reads in class. Regarding school libraries, when books are challenged, they generally are not removed.

Susan Flannery said there was a Supreme Court case in the late 70's or early 80's from New York where the court said that material should not be taken out of the school library just because someone did not approve of the content.

Regarding the situation where students are required to read a certain book for a particular class, Flannery said there was a Massachusetts case during the same time period in Buckland, Mass., where a high school senior English class was reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A parent challenged the use of the book. Ultimately, she said, the teacher's choice was supported and the book remained in the curriculum.

Flannery defended Massachusetts teachers, saying they generally have made good reading choices for their pupils. Parents who complain, she said, have been offered alternative books for their children to read.

'Outragous' Example

Ed Pawlick said in all his experience in legal publishing from 1972 until he sold his company about five years ago, there was one case that was "so egregious, so outrageous, it destroyed all the values of our democracy." The case was in Massachusetts in 1978 called "Right to Read Committee of Chelsea, et al v. School Committee of the City of Chelsea."

Pawlick said that in the Chelsea case, parents complained about a book that was in the school library. One poem, authored by a fifteen-year-old girl, was an obscenity-laced piece titled "Male and Female under 18." The school committee took the book out of the library.

According to Pawlick, some people, primarily employees of the school district, brought a suit. Judge Tauro, who is now chief justice of the U.S. District Court, held that, the school committee had a right to decide if they were going to have a library at all. They also had a right to decide which books should be in the library. But if somebody snuck a book in there without their seeing it, they couldn't remove the book.

"Now this is obviously absurd," said Pawlick. "School libraries remove books every year. Who is to say whether they are removing a book for this purpose or that purpose or what purpose? Does that mean every time we have a decision in a school library, a federal judge is going to go in and decide what books are going to be removed that year?"

Pawlick said that is the only case he has kept with him and has had in his possession for the last 25 years.

"To me that is the erosion of democracy in America when a federal court takes over that type of thing and tells the people what type of books they have to have in their library.

"If some school wants to have that in its library, that's fine. But if some other school wants to take it out of its library, who are we to sit and say that Walpole or Medfield should keep that book in its library. It's absolutely, totally absurd." He said the case wasn't appealed, so it is still the law and people still cite it.

Everyone Censors

Pawlick said everyone censors, so the question revolves around where to draw the line.

"Everybody practices censorship," said Pawlick, who pointed out that all would agree we wouldn't buy books for libraries containing child pornography or books written by the Ku Klux Klan.

"These people have to make decisions all the time about what books they are going to buy. The books they are going to buy are going to be books people want to read and see, and I don't think books by the KKK will sell very well in Massachusetts. It would be a waste of resources."

Flannery disagreed, saying there are reasons people might want to read books by the KKK. She also said child pornography is illegal, but with the television cameras rolling, did not say whether she believes such material should be legal.

Pawlick told Flannery if she had her way, the library would have to cover several square miles. "They have to be selective, and in their selection there is going to be some form of what they think is important. That's inevitable."

Pawlick said it is a subjective decision. "It's not a question of whether or not we censor, it is of where do we place the line on censorship?"

Readers Affect Decision

Fiels offered that requests from the community influence selection policies to some degree.

Regarding how books are selected for review at his newspaper, Tom Glynn said there are two standards: books that are beneficial and books that are of interest to people. He said he uses the second standard because it is not a book reviewer's or editor's role to decide what books are good for people. They look instead at books people are interested in and talk about them.

Glynn said he writes most of the headlines, and sometimes "censors" a headline he doesn't like that was written by one of his editors.

The moderator asked Pawlick if he agreed that different ways of writing a headline could color a story, especially if a person only reads the headline.

Pawlick said MassNews points out all the time how the Boston Globe writes misleading headlines.

Conservatives Are Censored

Pawlick said there is one thing that really bothers him, which hadn't been mentioned yet. That is how conservatives are censored all the time in Massachusetts. "We have no voice at all," he said.

He cited Harvey Silverglate, a well-known liberal and criminal defense lawyer in Boston and a well-respected member of the ACLU, who wrote about censorship in our colleges. By utilizing politically correct speech codes on campus, students and faculty who threaten prevailing norms are forced to undergo Cambodian style thought reform. "In a surreptitious about face, universities have become the enemy to a free society and it is time to hold these institutions to account," wrote Silverglate.

"That's not a flaming right-wing kook," said Pawlick.

Stung by the accusation from one of her own that the left practices censorship, Flannery attempted damage control by shifting to a legal argument, saying the First Amendment prohibits the government from practicing censorship, not a newspaper, an individual or a teacher from using good judgment.

ACLU Violated Voters Rights in Mass. Last Fall

While on the subject of the ACLU and censorship, Pawlick said members of the ACLU, who are rabid promoters of the gay agenda, held nightly meetings in Boston to teach homosexual "blockers" how to harass and intimidate voters at malls who wanted to exercise their constitutional right to sign the Protection of Marriage petition.

Pawlick pointed out how even though Cheryl Jacques and Barney Frank are his representatives, and they do not necessarily represent his point of view, he would never go around and try to stop them from getting signatures for their nominations.

"I would never even think about it. And how the ACLU can go around and try to stop citizens of Massachusetts from getting signatures on their petitions, making them afraid of going to shopping malls so that they had to hire paid signature gatherers, is a disgrace."

To show Flannery, Pawlick pulled out a copy of the MassNews containing photos of the "blockers" interfering with signature gatherers.

"How you can say that the ACLU is not a political organization or is not against free speech? Just look at these pictures."

Flannery denied any knowledge of the tactics. "I'm not aware of it and I'm not prepared to debate you on that particular issue," she said.

Pawlick then pulled out a hard cover book titled The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union. and asked Flannery if she is familiar with it.

"No."

"Well I'll tell you one reason you're not aware of it. Because none of the thirty-four libraries in the Minuteman Library Network have it. I used to live in Weston. I don't know the name of the library network down here. There are thirty-four libraries up there from Cambridge to Medfield to Medway, and not one of them carries this book about the ACLU, because it's derogatory about the ACLU. I'm not surprised. That is censorship."

Marriage

The panel was silent on the marriage issue. When asked for comment, Ed Pawlick said the Marriage Amendment is one issue that the press has not presented carefully. He said feminists at NOW and at the Globe, who believe marriage is deleterious to women, are the real opponents to the Amendment.

"Gays will be one of the very smallest groups of people affected by that Amendment, and yet, gays are pushed out in front by every newspaper in the state. People who will be most affected by it are heterosexuals who want to have all the benefits of marriage but none of the responsibilities. It's not an anti-gay measure at all."

Hate

On the subject of racist and anti-Semitic leafleting by "hate groups" in several Massachusetts towns, Pawlick offered a possibility that is never considered by the mainstream press.

Pawlick said the problem is that the leafleting is done surreptitiously, so nobody knows who is doing it. "They are finding in many parts of the country that such leafleting is often done by the minority group themselves. So we have no idea if it is really happening in Massachusetts or if someone is pretending it is happening."

Pawlick said rabbis say that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has little to do because there is little anti-Semitism out there, so they have taken up homosexuality as a cause. Therefore, the ADL, a religious organization, is going into the schools in Massachusetts - against all our principles separating church and state - preaching that homosexuality is because of a gay gene. They state we have to accommodate kids who are vulnerable and who think they are homosexual, and send them off with homosexual activists.

"Why is a religious organization going into our schools and promoting this idea? They just went into Hamilton. The Boston Globe had a big story about 'hate' in Hamilton because the selectmen didn't sign the pledge card they wanted. This is atrocious. The Boston Globe just went right along with it and said Hamilton is full of hate."

The panel discussion, titled "Censorship and Free Speech: What is their role in America's public life today?" was sponsored by the Walpole library as one of a series of events marking the end of the "Walpole Reads" program, which started last January.