Call for Nationwide Library Picketing
Goes Largely Unheeded
An attempt by a listener of radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger to organize a nationwide anti-pornography picketing of libraries on September 18 has yielded only two reported protests. One, which was organized by the central-Illinois group Citizens for Community Values, took place outside Chicago Public Library’s central facility. The other was held in front of the King County (Wash.) Library System’s Bellevue branch.
Picketer John Klompmaker told Chicago’s ABC-TV affiliate WLS that filters don’t thwart searches for information on breast cancer or the human body, as about a dozen adults and a pre-teenaged girl marched behind him with signs such as “Porn Kills.” The library declined to comment.
Among the approximately 20 Bellevue picketers was Heidi Borton, who worked for 10 years in the King County Library System and now spearheads the “Stop Now” campaign featured on Christian radio station KGNW. KCLS librarian Sharon Wilson told the September 20 Eastside Journal that the library only filters one of its 30 computers because the blocking software “prevents us from accessing online encyclopedias.”
Posted September 27, 1999.
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