News.Bookweb.org | November 18, 2010
By Chris Finan

Why in the world would anyone defend a book like The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct?

A number of people asked me this during the recent controversy over Amazon.com’s decision to sell the book. (The book is no longer available from Amazon.) When I was quoted in an AP story saying the book appeared to be neither obscene nor child pornography and was therefore protected by the First Amendment, several outraged people wrote to me and members of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression board to complain. How could we defend a book that hurts children?

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THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
By Tim Wu | November 14, 2010

In 1930, a man named Daniel Lord wrote a Production Code for American motion pictures. He included specific prohibitions: “Dances suggesting indecent passions,” he wrote, “are forbidden.” But Lord’s general point was to ensure that American films didn’t glorify that which was morally wrong and that they always had a happy ending. Movies would be a source of uplift. “No picture shall be produced,” he wrote, “that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.”

Lord wasn’t a government censor. Rather, he was a Roman Catholic priest dedicated to the elimination of “filth.” Nonetheless, his code—with all of its ambitions of thought control—became one of the most effective regulations on speech in American history, more potent than any law or government program. Lord was successful in large part because the industry imposed his code on itself.

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KLTV.com
By Layron Livingston | November 17, 2010

Jonathan Reck said his 14-year-old daughter was on the waiting list for days to check out Vegan Virgin Valentine from the Quitman Junior High library.

“I don’t think there’s a parent in this town that would agree that that book needs to be on the shelf,” he said.

Reck said his girlfriend’s son told him what the book was about, so he read a few pages himself.

“The scene it describes is right on the verge of pornography,” he said, referring to a sexual encounter described in the book. “It leaves very little to the imagination.”

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MyNorthwest.com
By Linda Thomas/KIRO Radio | November 17, 2010

Something 10th graders at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle did was so upsetting to a student and her mom that it’s resulted in a curriculum change at the school, and apologies from the principal.

What were they doing? Reading. Reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as part of their language arts curriculum.

While the book is the center of a new controversy in Seattle, the debate about the fictional story has gone on for decades. The American Library Association ranks Brave New World as number 36 on the list of the top 100 books people have either banned or tried to ban.

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