Jerking Off at the Public Library

My wife and I were having a political discussion last weekend about constitutional rights and the subject, introduced by her, came up about the right to view porn sites in a public library.

I must admit that she is a lot farther to the left then I would like but she is my wife so I accommodate her thought pattern. She was arguing that it should be O.K. for people to look up sites on the web, at a public library, where as the sites content has to do primarily with sex.

My rebuttal to her argument was that the library is no place for people to be looking up porn sites for personal pleasure. A public library is no place to let someone fulfill or indulge in their personal fantasies. This kind of activity can be performed in the privacy of someones home without insult or injury to the person passing by. So why should it be allowed in the public library?

She addressed this remark by stating that "what if you were a college student doing a research paper, wouldn't you want access to all materials possible to conduct your research?"

I have to admit I was perplexed by her response, I thought, well she might have a point here, isn't the public library, before the age of the Internet, the place where citizens went to conduct research? So, how could municipalities put restrictions on what can and can't be looked at on a computer at the public library? Isn't the public library exactly that, "a public library"?

So I gathered my thoughts real quick and I argued that libraries have never had pornographic magazines on the shelves next to other publications that are readily available, so why should access to a porn site on a computer, at a public library, be any different?

Her response was, "its not any different, we've just been censored for a long time before the age of the Internet."

At this point I knew the discussion was going nowhere fast so I asked her "how important is this issue that you need to make a stand, plant a flag, in the middle of a public library?"

And her response was, "it's no different then people saying I have to look at the ten commandments every time I enter a public court house, it's a religious marking, it offends me, no different then porn in a public library."

I realized at this point that my wife was not arguing her beliefs but that she was arguing her rights as an American citizen not to be afflicted by the thoughts of others within a government building that she frequents often.

So I started thinking of a compromise, what if we put private viewing booths in the libraries for computers that have Internet access, were as anyone can do whatever they want, shielded from public view, and we will do the same in the court houses. We will allow viewing of the ten commandments but only if it's in a private viewing area where, just like porn in the library, the true believers can jerk off all they want without offending anybody.