Dr. Seuss, Mother Goose, pictures of people having sex with a moose—children can find them all at Alachua County libraries, and Judith Krug wants to keep it that way.

Krug, director of the American Library Association's intellectual freedom office, opposes the county's plan to use filtering software to block children's access to sexually explicit Internet sites.

"I don't care if a 15-year-old is looking at a naked breast or penis," she said. "You want to know something? The kids are going to find out about sex the same way you and I did. You did find out about it, didn't you? I would just as soon have kids learn in an environment that is safer than some other places they could learn about it."

Besides, she said, the filtering issue isn't about sex; it's about censorship. Krug equates Internet filtering to book banning. Using filters to censor constitutionally protected speech violates the ALA's bill of rights, she said.

Installing filters could suck Alachua County into the heart of a raging national debate that has polarized several American communities, pitting civil libertarians against anti-pornography forces. Florida has already felt the sting in Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando.

"Filters are the hottest issue in library-land today," Krug said. "They are literally rending this profession asunder."

A hard rain's gonna fall
On the morning of Friday, Oct. 15, there was no sign of an approaching tempest inside the downtown library. Outside, the only storm threatening Gainesville was the one hovering over Key West—Hurricane Irene.

Downstairs, a stuffed pink bunny sat sentry atop one of the four computers. The children's area was deserted—it was a school day.

None of the children's computers has Internet access. While they might house pictures of a moose, in all likelihood, his name would be Bullwinkle.

If a flying squirrel's alter ego is not stimulating enough, only two flights of stairs separate patrons from more provocative images. Ten computers offer unfiltered Internet access to anyone who asks.

Alachua County does not use filters at any of its 10 branches, but that is about to change. The boards of trustees and governors decided in August to begin filtering at least one computer in every branch.

Debby Simone, assistant library director, said the library recently appointed a staff committee to hunt the best filtering software and review the Internet policy. The committee will make their suggestions to the board of trustees in December. She expects the governing board to approve the recommendations in January.

The challenge is to find a way to shield children from sexually graphic material while protecting the rights of adults, Simone said.

Kathy Valente, founder of Citizens for Community Values, an anti-pornography organization in Lansing, Ill., said in an e-mail interview that Alachua County should block all of the computers and stop using tax dollars to supply pornography. Using tax dollars to block pornography was a better idea.

"Should my tax dollars pay for someone else's titillation? Someone else's addiction? Someone else's perversion? If the library doesn't subscribe to the Journal of Bestiality or Pedophiles-R-Us, then there's no reasonable explanation why they have to offer these things on the Internet," she said.

Valente blames pornography for many of society's ills. It destroys families, jobs and influences violent sex crimes, she said.

"Are you aware of the thousands of incidents, some criminal, taking place in libraries that offer unfiltered Internet? Kids are being molested and exposed to the perverted addictions of others. Porn left on screens on purpose, including seeing men masturbating," Valente said.

Valente may not speak softly but she carries a big stick. She led an Oct. 23 picket at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago to protest the refusal of the library to install filters. She said it would not surprise her to find such strong emotions had influenced the Alachua County decision.

Simone said the board's decision had nothing to do with anti-pornography groups. There had been no public outcry to install filters—the library staff initiated the idea. "We thought it was an opportune time to review it with our board," she explained.

Simone acknowledged that filtering Web sites was not the only concern. Two other issues lie buried in the minefield the committee must cross when they decide what to block: chat rooms and, especially, newsgroups.

Unlike most Internet sex sites which require a credit card to access, newsgroups are free and only a couple of mouse clicks away. Anyone can post photos, text or videos in relative anonymity. It is as simple as sending an e-mail with a photograph attached.

Of the more than 30,000 newsgroups, 281 fall under the heading alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. In a string of terms separated by periods, the final term further defines what type of pictures a newsgroup favors. Among those 281 terms are the following: bestiality, babies, bondage, children, early-teens, fetish, fisting, groupsex, lolita, midgets, nuns, pre-teens, pregnant, rape, sheep, transvestites, urine and violence.

Another challenge, Simone said, is preventing children from seeing what the adults are viewing. Libraries might have to erect privacy screens, she said.

Valente is concerned about the erection of screens.

"Privacy screen? That'll turn the library into an adult bookstore with peep booths. Men will no longer have to travel 20 minutes to the strip bar or adult bookstore where they can have anonymous sex through the glory holes in the peep booths," Valente said. "Now they can go to the neighborhood library and have privacy screens so they can masturbate and get all charged up at no cost to them. It's easy access and you don't even have to pay for it. The taxpayers will. Men have already been found masturbating at terminals."

Valente is author of the "CCV Bulletin," an anti-pornography e-mail newsletter she sends to churches, pro-family groups, law enforcement agencies and politicians. She said America's future depends on electing officials who will not kowtow to civil libertarians.

Krug thinks Valente is already living in her utopia. "Today's politicians are the most shortsighted, ridiculous bunch I have ever come across," she said. "How, in a nation of about 280 million people, we elect our dumbest and our weakest to lead us, is beyond me."

A public library is the greatest resource a free people can claim, according to Krug. Damming the flow of information threatens every American. She said libraries are a safety net that allows Americans to be self-governors.

What "right-wing nutties" fail to grasp, she said, is that the First Amendment protects the free flow of unpopular information. There is no need to protect popular ideas.

"That doesn't mean I'm pushing them toward it," she said. "And it doesn't mean that, if it's a young person, most librarians aren't going to ask if they are sure they want to be there or offer them help getting the information they want."

If they install filters, Alachua County will join a small number of public libraries in the United States that restrict Internet access.

According to a 1998 study, 85.5 percent of the libraries that offer Internet access do not use filters. The study also found that, of the 73.3 percent of libraries offering Internet access, 42.7 percent have only one computer available to the public. The study was co-sponsored by the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and the ALA, the world's largest national library organization with more than 55,000 members.

Simone said Alachua County's smallest libraries might be limited to one computer. However, she added, that would be an exception because most of the 10 branches are large enough to have more than one.

Having room for several computers is meaningless, according to Bob Stevens, chairman of the Gainesville chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. The number of unfiltered computers in each branch is all that matters.

The library is risking a First Amendment lawsuit if they do not provide unfiltered computers in every branch, Stevens said.

"I would say it would be all right to filter some of the computers," he said. "I would certainly not dedicate any more than a small percentage of the computers to be restricted access."

Simone said each library would have at least one filtered computer, and larger libraries likely would have more than one. However, she added, the board directed libraries to continue providing unfiltered computers.

"We've got more computers on order so the smaller libraries will have a choice between filtered and unfiltered," she said.

That does not appease Krug. She said she has heard similar stories before.

"Many librarians and many boards of trustees say they're going to filter in the children's room, but make unfiltered computers available for everyone outside the children's room. In theory, that sounds really good. But, when push comes to shove, what they really mean is they are going to make unfiltered computers available for anyone over the age of majority," she said. "I always ask if everyone, including the child, is able to access them. They usually say, oh yes, oh yes. But, I say you're lying. You're not going to allow them to access those computers."

Sex controversies make for exotic bedfellows
In 1995, Guardian Angels President Curtis Sliwa founded Cyberangels, an online safety organization. In 1998, the organization won a Presidents' Service Award for its efforts to protect children from dangers lurking on the Net.

The group's Web site offers information on such topics as:

• Internet Safety vs. First Amendment Rights: Are We Selling Out Our Children?
• The use of filters in helping parents and educators to make the Internet safer for kids.
• Filtering and Blocking Tools.
• Chart of Leading Filtering Software.
• Filters and what parents can do.

Parry Aftab is the director of Cyberangels. A lawyer specializing in the law of cyberspace and author of "Parents Guide to the Internet," she was a featured speaker at the 1998 White House Summit on Online Content for Children.

You might expect Aftab to spearhead the fight for mandatory filtering. You would be wrong.

"I'm a lawyer. We don't know anything," Aftab said. "When it comes to filters, I'm pro-choice. It's not my job to tell other people what to do."

Courts have consistently held that it is a First Amendment violation to block children from viewing sexually explicit material unless adults have unfettered access. Aftab said the First Amendment applies to libraries in particular.

"When they say, 'Congress shall not,' they are talking about governmental entities. Libraries are governmental entities," she said. "So until the filtering software is developed that only blocks illegal speech, which won't happen in our lifetime, they cannot filter all access. I don't know what's illegal speech so I don't know how a filtering product could know."

You might expect a lawyer who heads another anti-pornography group dedicated to protecting children to echo Aftab's position. Again, you would be wrong.

When it comes to filtering, Robert Peters does not differentiate between children and adults.

Peters, an attorney and the president of the anti-pornography watchdog group Morality in Media, has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the Pornography Victims Compensation Act and written amicus curiae briefs submitted to the Supreme Court. Amicus curia, Latin for "friend of the court," refers to a legal argument filed by a non-participant that has an interest in the outcome of a case.

"I do not think the Supreme Court will hold that a public school or library cannot use screening technology unless the technology can distinguish perfectly between what does and does not constitute, according to current legal definitions, child porn and obscenity," Peters said in an e-mail interview. "There is no constitutional mandate that public libraries must provide access to everything on the Internet."

Peters said libraries are selective about what they put on the shelves and have the right to apply those same standards to what they put on the computer. They select materials with artistic, literary, political or scientific value, he said, and match those items to interests and sensibilities of the community they serve.

David Burt agrees that selectivity does not equate to censorship. Burt, an information technology librarian and ALA member, is president of Filtering Facts. He created the organization, which is devoted to promoting use of filtering software in libraries, because the library association's anti-filtering stand upset him.

Burt said filtering children's computers should be mandatory. He would not mandate filters for all computers but said it would be acceptable because libraries do not make pornography available in other formats.

"How can the library remove something, a Web site, that never existed in the library? The library simply chose not to acquire www.bestiality.com," Burt said in an e-mail interview. "I think it is exceedingly dumb to argue that the library acquires the entire contents of the Internet by getting a network connection."

Barbara Smith, a Brechner Fellow at the University of Florida, said Burt's argument is off base. A federal judge in 1998 ruled the Internet is a single integrated system, much like a set of encyclopedias, she said. The judge equated filtering all computers to tearing out parts of the encyclopedia.

Smith, a doctoral candidate in mass media law who has been researching the regulation of Internet content through filtering, said the case set the ground rules for other libraries to follow.

The 1997 case challenged the constitutionality of using Internet filters in public libraries. The ACLU and People for the American Way sued a Virginia library on behalf of Mainstream Loudoun, a local civil liberties group. The suit claimed the Loudoun County Library violated the First Amendment when it decided to monitor computer use and filter Internet content.

In a landmark decision, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled the library policy unconstitutional. Brinkema said the library made all Internet publications available the moment it offered public access. Because the library chose to purchase Internet access, the First Amendment restricted the limitations it could put on its use, she said.

"Unlike an interlibrary loan or outright book purchase, no appreciable expenditure of library time or resources is required to make a particular Internet publication available to a library patron," Brinkema said. "In contrast, a library must actually expend resources to restrict Internet access to a publication that is otherwise immediately available."

The judge awarded the plaintiffs more than $100,000 to cover costs and attorneys fees. The library board decided not to appeal Brinkema's ruling.

Smith said Alachua County seemed to be on solid constitutional ground by planning to offer both filtered and unfiltered computers.

Much ado about a stiff breeze
So, who is going to decide if minors can use the unfiltered computers? Parry Aftab said parents should make that decision, not librarians. She suggested having parents sign permission slips designating filtered or unfiltered. That would be the easiest solution.

Krug said that might seem easy, but wondered who was supposed to monitor children when parents dump them at the library door—certainly not the librarians. That would turn them into baby-sitters at best, and morality police at worst, she said.

"I'm not a baby-sitter, I'm a public information source," she said. "I have parents who complain the library isn't safe and they can't send their kids there any more. I ask if they send their child to the mall alone. Yes, the library is safer than the mall, but I'm not standing at the door checking everybody that comes in there."

Aftab agreed. Librarians are underpaid, undervalued and "the hardest working people on earth." They are not baby-sitters.

"We don't have enough librarians to man the kids' areas now. Instead of hassling them and everybody sitting on them and yelling at them for this stuff, we should recognize they are the ones who will lead us into the Internet and show us where all the good stuff is," she said. "We should be teaching our children how to evaluate information that may be written by kooks and cults and nasty people, and recognizing it for what it is. Parents are far more worried about the bad stuff than the kids are. If kids have good stuff, they don't bother with the bad stuff."

Jamie McCarthy, co-founder of The Censorware Project, said educating parents is just as important. The Censorware Project is an organization dedicated to eliminating filters and educating parents and other consumers about flaws in the filtering software.

McCarthy also belongs to Peacefire, an organization with more than 3,300 members that represent interests of children in the filtering debate. All Peacefire staff members are less than 18. McCarthy, 29, said he is not on staff.

"I think Peacefire is a great group, if for no other reason than it forces adults to acknowledge that the kids exist. Somehow, `for the children' became something you don't argue with," McCarthy said in an e-mail interview. "With Peacefire around, it's hard to invoke children as an unquestionable motivation. When the kids themselves join the discussion, the dynamic changes. Especially because they usually end up on the opposite side of the very adults who keep saying they're doing it for the children."

Stevens agrees. The filtering issue has nothing to do with protecting children, he said. It is all about pacifying parents.

"If you're going to satisfy parents, ultimately you're going to have to put in filters that block out everything which any parent wants blocked out for his or her child," he said. "You would have to let all parents pass through the library and yank off the shelves any book which they deem offensive."

That is not fair to other patrons, he said. Parents need to supervise their children if they are worried about what they might see in a library, he said.

As it turns out, that is what they will have to do.

The library will not monitor unsupervised children. Simone said it would be the parent's responsibility. "Our board specifically said that library staff should not get between parent and child," she said, adding that the children would have to do whatever their parents told them to do.

Valente said that is no different from the present system. She said there is only one reason Alachua County would invest so much time and money to maintain the status quo. "It's a smoke screen," she said. Getting parents off their back is their number one priority; otherwise they'd have filtered all the computers."

For once, McCarthy agrees with Valente. If parents want to keep children from seeing sexually explicit Web sites they should tell them to stay off those sites. However, he added, the plan is not as bad as it might have been.

"It seems a little silly, but vastly better, and probably cheaper, than the solutions many other libraries have come up with," McCarthy said. "However, it'd be a lot simpler, and cheaper yet, for a few key people to grow backbones."