In reaction to a months-long campaign by social conservatives, the Post Falls (Idaho) Library Board modified its video-lending policy December 11 to allow parents to bar their children under 18 from borrowing any of the library’s 26 R-rated videos. A week earlier, a half-dozen people picketed the library to protest trustees’ mid-November establishment of a ratings-neutral policy that forced parents to choose between allowing their children access to all library videos—or to none.
PFL Director Joe Reiss told American Libraries that trustees revisited its “all-or-nothing” policy because the community perceived it as an “arrogant” response to their legitimate concerns. Noting that radio personality Laura Schlessinger decried the policy on her radio show in late November, Reiss said that such issues can “poison a community” against the library, even one like Post Falls, where a construction bond issue landed a 78% yes vote in 1997.
Among the library’s R-rated holdings are Shakespeare in Love, Stand by Me, and Last of the Mohicans.
Posted December 18, 2000.