Amid the mail awaiting ALA Executive Director William R. Gordon on his return from Annual Conference in early July were 14,410 form letters asking him "for the sake of America's children" to "change the Association's official stance" against the use of Internet filters in libraries and to "encourage librarians across the country to make use of them."
Gordon had been forewarned about the mailing: Coral Ridge Ministries President D. James Kennedy wrote June 17 to say he was sending the signed letters as "protest petitions from people across America who are angered at the American Library Association's opposition to Internet filtering software for public libraries."
Acknowledging ALA's "need to be respectful of other people's approach to this issue," Gordon noted that ALA's role is "to establish policies in support of the First Amendment, and to which individual libraries can aspire," a goal some communities achieve "in their own way and at their own speed."
Posted July 13, 1998.