Massachusetts News 

September 2--The pedophilia website, "All About Sex," has finally been removed from the list of recommended sites for teenagers on the Minuteman Library Network.  

Therefore, many people are saying that we have "won" in that 1) the librarians have finally removed "All About Sex" from their recommended list and 2) they added some abstinence sites last month.  

But there are no "winners" or "losers" here. The librarians have been very reluctant – and they have done this only after complaints from many citizens and library trustees from the 34 public libraries in the Metrowest area of Boston which belong to the Network. 

We must continue to ask these questions. Why are they so reluctant? Do they really believe that any mother or father would want their children confiding their sexual questions to one unknown man in Texas who is trying to correspond with any child he can find? This man has all the hallmarks of a pedophile. Would they want their children to correspond with him? Why was this site ever recommended by the librarians in the first place? Why has it taken four months for them to remove it? 

When we quietly notified the librarians about the site last April, it was with the mistaken belief that they would thank us profusely for telling them and they would quickly remove it. We had no idea we were beginning a confrontational brouhaha with the Network. Like most people we have had a tremendous respect for them over the years because of all the good they have done with the libraries, and this recent experience has been a shock. We were wrong about them. They have a definite "in-your-face" attitude as though a citizen has no right to even question them. We’ve heard many ridiculous things. The librarian and his assistant in Dedham told the daily newspaper there that this was a very serious matter, an important question of Freedom of Speech.  

That is so incorrect and ridiculous that one wonders whether 1) they are intentionally trying to confuse the citizens or 2) they really don’t understand such a simple concept. This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech.  

This is analogous to taking the twenty "best" books in a library and putting them in a case at the front door and recommending them to the patrons. If the librarians later put one of the books back on the shelf in the stacks where it belongs, no one would say that involved Freedom of Speech. The book would still be there in the library where anyone could read it. It was just not on the "recommended" list anymore. This would be equivalent to removing a website from the list of recommended sites. 

They’re Still Recommending Pedophilia 

Now that "All About Sex" is gone from the website, the first site that teenagers will see on the recommended list is one from a coalition of the following groups in Chicago, "No More Nice Girls," "Queer Nation," "ACT UP," and "Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition." Those groups do not provide the names of any individuals who work at their site, but they say that they range from 19-year-olds to 48-year-olds. They state very clearly and frankly that the school system in Chicago does not like them. They complain about the school "administrators" who "resist" them and the principals who confiscate the literature they try to distribute at schools. So we must wonder, "If the Chicago schools are fighting to keep these adults away from their teenagers, why is the Minuteman Library Network trying to get the children of suburban Boston corresponding with them?" 

Have our librarians not heard about the 59-year-old lawyer from Dover, Massachusetts, who flew all the way to San Francisco last spring to meet with a 13-year-old boy he had met on the Internet, only to be welcomed by the FBI? Are we trying to get pedophiles flying from Chicago to Boston?  

Why Do They Meet In Secret? 

The Minuteman Library Network is a private club. Their money comes, apparently exclusively, from federal, state and municipal funds. Yet, they meet in secret and refuse to give any information about themselves. They are able to do this because they are organized as a private, non-profit corporation. 

One must wonder whether they organized in this manner just to get around the Open Meeting policy that applies to all government agencies in Massachusetts. We will try to get more information on this subject for you but it will not be easy. 
 

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