To look at the other side of this subject, the question to be asked is censorship in libraries and schools is justified. The answer is no, and that is what will be explained.
Censorship is ridiculous, unfair and selfish, and censors are hypocritical, intolerant, and arrogant. What I mean when I say censorship is ridiculous is exactly that. In censorship opposing Viewpoints, “it states that the American Heritage Dictionary was banned from Anchorage, Alaska because of words considered to be obscene, like bed, tail, ball, and nut.” At first we laugh at it, but we stop when we hear it has also been banned in Cedar City, Indiana, and Eldon, Missouri. “The percent of other dictionaries were banned in Texas.” These people that ban them all themselves People for Better Education. I thought dictionaries help you learn? An article in Scholastic Update entitled “The Case of the disappearing Books” it says “last year there were 338 cases of parents trying to remove books, among these was the classic Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.” A teacher was fired because she assigned a book with a lesbian as a main character. A parent, Ruth Somoro, said “this was being intolerant of religious beliefs, and schools aren’t supposed to promote religious beliefs.” The Supreme Court ruled books couldn’t be removed because they dislike the ideas I them. A student says, “They don’t let me bring God into school, so I don’t think they should be able to bring the devil into school.” This boy thought homosexuals descended directly from the devil.
Religious Right people seem to think that if you have a word in your vocabulary such as, academic freedom, analysis, career education, creative writing, human growth, identity, parenting, racism, world view, and self-understanding, (there are others but this gets all of the human race), you are a secular humanist. This has now become known as anyone with other beliefs than the Religious Right; it is a code word for communism. These people are part of a conspiracy against America and dare also communists who shouldn’t have a say in anything. This is from an essay in Censorship opposing viewpoint, by Michael Scott Cane.
The second aspect that censorship is unfair and selfish deals with our rights and the First Amendment. A quote from Nat Hentoff in “The Case of the disappearing books, “says, “The First Amendment doesn’t just give you the right to express ideas, there’s also a right to receive them.” We have the right to read any book we want and educate ourselves: the library plays a big part in this. Guess what, we also have the right to choice and we can choose not to read something if we don’t like the content, that doesn’t mean we have to force others not to read it. The Religious Right seems to be forcing their beliefs on us, and we also have freedom of Religion. The Religious Right is trying to take over the libraries locally. The libraries would then be “family friendly” with parental advisory sections because they feel it is Gounaud in an article from the education Digest, “The Religious Right Hits Libraries.”
