Dear Editor:
On behalf of the National Writers Union, I wish to express our dismay at your editorial, "Indecent Exposure," supporting Mayor Menino's fiat to violate Massachusetts citizens' First Amendment rights by installing censoring software within the Boston Public Library system and on all other city computers.
What the mayor did was illegal. First of all, as many have already noted, he has barred adults from accessing constitutionally protected material. What has been overlooked is that he has also trampled upon the Constitutional rights of minors.
No one is forcing minors to view sexually explicit materials on the internet. (Should this be the case, of course, that is harassment, a very different but important issue.) Most assume that children are their parents' property and have no rights of their own. But the courts have ruled differently.
For non-sexual materials, minors have the same First Amendment rights as adults. And Cyber Patrol (and other censorware) blocks far more than sexual material. Cyber Patrol blocks, or has blocked, animal rights and environmental sites, gay and lesbian political sites (include discussion forums for gay youth), feminist sites, anti-censorship sites, sites opposing software patents, and sites sponsored by the National Rifle Association. Cyber Patrol also blocks by using abbreviated names, causing the collateral blocking of innocuous sites.
For sexual materials, minors don't have the same rights as adults, but they have extensive rights nonetheless. To be deprived of Constitutional protection, material must fail a stringent variation of the three-part Miller test. Most of the sexual material blocked by censorware is in fact Constitutionally protected, even for minors.
Most alarming of all, Cyber Patrol (like other censorware) is sold by a private corporation that makes their censoring decisions in carefully guarded secrecy and refuses to divulge them publicly. The resulting censorship is thus insulated from public scrutiny and debate.
Furthermore, we are offended by your Pecksniffian references to pornography. Pornography is just a word for sexually explicit material, with the added implication that the speaker disagrees with its content. Since most people disapprove of homosexuality, for example, gay and lesbian material is often dismissed as pornography, and it is almost invariably the first material banned. It doesn't surprise us that the leading censorware products routinely screen out gay-positive material.
When the US Congress passed and President Clinton signed the unconstitutional Communication Decency Act, the National Writers Union immediately joined with 18 other groups to sue to protect the First Amendment. We will do everything in our power to prevent elected officials, such as Mayor Menino, from censoring our public libraries. As concerned and patriotic citizens, we will defend our essential freedoms and stand up to governmental abuse. We are embarrassed for the Boston Globe because you do not.
Sincerely,
Robert B. Chatelle, Political Issues Co-Chair
National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981 AFL-CIO