You bet we censor! Only we call it "selection" and every library does it.

We serve the people in our community, and we provide them with what they want to read. We recently bought 35 copies of the last Harry Potter book, even though letters condemning as promoting witchcraft and paganism appeared in the paper. I did not want to buy Ann Coulter's last book, but we had patrons ask for it so we bought A copy.

As for coarsening society, should we stock any of these: Mein Kampf; The Old Testament; The Complete Jack The Ripper; Huckleberry Finn; Cyrano de Bergerac; Macbeth; The Joy of Sex? How about such pictures as Guernica or Goya's executions? Shall we stock DVDs of All Quiet On The Western Front and Full Metal Jacket?

The public library is NOT a place for my opinion or yours to dominate. We select what appears to us to be the best available material at this time that deals with BOTH sides of an issue and will let YOU make up your own mind.

Were I to fail to buy this book because of my own personal beliefs in the matter, I would be as guilty of censorship as those librarians of yesteryear who banner "Nancy Drew" and "The Hardy Boys" because they weren't "literature" or the Brownshirts burning the works of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud because they were Jewish.