"A Seattle librarian refused to force a man watching hardcore porn on a computer to move to a more discreet location, even after a woman with two children complained, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

(snip)

According to newspaper, the woman isn’t the first person to speak up. Several parents and teachers have complained about library patrons watching graphic pornography while children are present, the paper said..."

I told my husband about this story...

"Well, P, that's what you get with all these jenkem sniffers. If I was there, I say, you have the right to watch that porn, and I have the right to bust you in the head. I'll say, I was exercisin' my right to swing my fist and his head happened to be there. And then I'll crash the computer down on his head and that was my exercise.  Every time I see you watching porn in the library, that's when I feel like exercising...."

"It reminds me of that bastard I saw once, he had a flag sewed on the back of his jacket...it was defaced. He said, I've got the right to wear this flag!  Well yeah. You've got the right to wear that flag if you can go through me.  Then I punched him in the stomach, he fell and I cut that flag off his jacket with my knife and burned it. There's your rights, motherfucker. You got rights and I got rights too..."

I didn't even know that was legal in libraries. I thought the public library computers had blocks on obscene web sites.

The Seattle library is a gorgeous modern building designed by a famous architect and with works of art placed throughout. Now my perspective on that place is completely changed!

They can't censor content...so theoretically a pedophile can sit in the children's section and watch porn.

Some of this stuff just doesn't make sense.

And I do wish my husband would come across something like this because he'd do exactly what he says he'd do and it would be instantaneous.

Plenty of people are willing to complain. Very few are willing to stand up and take action.

Semi-related story from a friend of mine. There's this woman who goes to school here who will somewhat regularly have seizures. One day this friend of mine came across her as she was having an attack and people were around and some were helping, but one guy was just there snapping pictures left and right. My friend, being the extra bullheaded Taurus that he is, went right up to the kid taking pictures and said, "What the hell are you doing?" with the expected reply of "I'm just taking pictures, man!" The Taurus just started railing into the photographer mostly because it was rude and the guy had no place intruding in such a way. That's probably the only time that photographer has ever been challenged in such a way and probably the only time he will be. Sometimes people just need to learn to be respectful of others, but that might be a lost art.

I wish your husband was there too!!

Some things simply should not be allowed.  This is one of those things.

@Elsa - and then ironically, your husband would be the one to be arrested! I still can't believe there isn't a law against this yet.

Yes, people complain but they are powerless because the rights of the perp, not the children are protected. I wonder when people are going to begin to feel that enough is enough.  Masturbate in private, do ya mind?

why doesn't this fall under public indecency?

Josephine, he wouldn't care. He's been arrested for kicking someone's ass before.  He does what he thinks is right and if there is a price to pay...well in his mind, it's much less then what he would pay for standing by.

They say they can't monitor it. Well okay, then I don't want to fund the library.

I thought pedophiles couldn't be within a certain amount of feet near children or a facility targeted to children.

And I thought there were blocks on library computers.  How could this happen?

Um. NO!!!! I likely could not do precisely what your husband says he would do but I'd sure bloody well try to do the equivalent.

On second thought... I might just do that. Just thinking about it makes me feel big and strong enough to lift a whole library stack and dump it on his head. Not to mention the librarian's head. Or a big enough library stack to dump on both in the same instant.

brizo, it would be impolite to bother the man, yanno?  And I am sure you can't question him either.

We've got TSA grabbing crotches of children in this day and age. It's what it has come to.

it isn't hard to put a safeguard on the web browser..  literally three clicks and it's done.  they are just full of shit..  pornography is not acceptable in public anywhere else, that's why porn shops don't have windows.  that's why strip clubs hapen in seedy parts of town... 

someone should go into the browser setting at each computer in that library and manually exclude any and all questionable websites.. i mean seriously.  mars is in virgo..  those librarians should have some gusto at this point, no?

Hmm this is strange. All the libraries I've been to have had blocking software put on them. I've never ever seen this allowed.