Posted October 28, 2005.

Town Leaders Reopen Playboy Decision

The Oak Lawn (Ill.) Village Board announced at an October 25 meeting that it was writing to city library trustees to request that they revisit their June decision to retain Playboy magazine over the objections of an area resident. “There is a difference between censorship and sponsorship,” Oak Lawn Mayor and Board President David Heilmann remarked, according to the October 26 Chicago Daily Southtown. “If someone wants the magazine, that’s fine. They can buy it at a store.”

The board voted unanimously to send the letter after hearing from Mark Decker, the Oak Lawn man who most recently appealed the board’s June decision to keep Playboy in the library. “Pornography and children don’t mix. This is not my opinion; it is fact,” Decker said in the October 27 Chicago Tribune.

“In my 32 years, I’ve never seen a municipal body ask a library to remove a title,” Library Director James Casey reacted in the Southtown.

The Southtown also reported that Decker has met with law enforcement regarding the sale of pornographic magazines in convenience stores; the Oak Lawn police subsequently wrote store owners to caution them that they might be selling titles that violate local obscenity laws.

Throughout the controversy, the library has continued to make Playboy available by request only to patrons who are at least 18 years old.

Posted October 28, 2005; modified November 11, 2005.