Quote of the Day: Barack Obama on Special Interests

"I've never been entirely comfortable with the term 'special-interests,' which lumps together ExxonMobil and bricklayers, the pharmaceutical lobby and the parents of special-ed kids. Most political scientists would probably disagree with me, but to my mind, there's a difference between a corporate lobby whose clout is based on money alone, and a group of like-minded individuals—whether they be textile workers, gun aficionados, veterans, or family farmers—coming together to promote their interests; between those who use their economic power to magnify their political influence far beyond what their numbers might justify, and those who are simply seeking to pool their votes to sway their representatives. The former subvert the very idea of democracy. The latter are its essence."

— Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, 2006, p. 116.

Quote of the Day: Barack Obama on Reading Critically

A 1950 edition.

‘“Sister Regina,” Marcus said. “You know Barack, don’t you? I’m trying to tell Brother Barack here about this racist tract he’s reading.”

He held up a copy of Heart of Darkness, evidence for the court. I reached over to snatch it out of his hands.

“Man, stop waving that thing around.”

“See there,” Marcus said, “Makes you embarrassed, don’t it—just being seen with a book like this. I’m telling you, man, this stuff will poison your mind.” He looked at his watch. “Damn, I’m late for class.” He leaned over and pecked Regina on the cheek. “Talk to this brother, will you? I think he can still be saved.”

Regina smiled and shook her head as we watched Marcus stride out the door. “Marcus is in one of his preaching moods, I see.” I toss the book in my backpack.

“Actually, he’s right,” I said. “It is a racist book. The way Conrad sees it, Africa’s the cesspool of the world, black folks are savages, and any contact with them breeds infection.”

Regina blew on her coffee. “So why are you reading it.”
“Because it’s assigned.” I paused, not sure if I should go on. “And because—“
“Because…”

“And because the book teaches me things,” I said. “About white people, I mean. See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world. If you can keep your distance, it’s all there, in what’s said and what’s left unsaid. So I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.”’

— Barack Obama recounting a college experience in Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

How We Know Abstinence-Only Education Doesn't Work

Abstinence-only education does not reduce teen pregnancy. If it did, decades of research would have demonstrated this many times over. Instead, research results have been overwhelmingly inconclusive or the opposite of what its advocates would like to see.

A method of "education" characterized by limiting what is taught had better yield clear practical benefits. At least then there might be a trade-off between knowledge and behavior.

The Rise of Abstinence-Only Education In the United States

Federal funding for abstinence-only programs began in 1982 with the Adolescent Family Life Act, which was part of the previous year's omnibus spending bill (blue "AFLA" line on the chart below). This sent millions of dollars annually to programs aimed at preventing "adolescent sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy." These programs were encouraged to partner with "religious and charitable" organizations, which led to such a degree of religious involvement that a case went up to the Supreme Court by 1988. In Bowen v. Kendrick (487 U.S. 589), the Court decided that the Act was not unconstitutional on its face, but did note that there appeared to be "impermissible" specific applications, which it called for other courts to examine.

In 1998, a major welfare reform dramatically increased funding for abstinence-only programs (red "Title V" line on chart below). This bill defined an abstinence education program as one which:

1. Has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity
2. Teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children
3. Teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems
4. Teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity
5. Teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects
6. Teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society
7. Teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances
8. Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity

In 2001, additional federal funding began flowing from the Community Based Abstinence Education program (purple "CBAE" line on the chart below). The overall progression has been from low funding in the 80s and early 90s, medium funding in the late 90s, peak funding in the 00s, and back down to medium funding through at least 2014, thanks to $50 million per year allocated as part of the Affordable Care Act. In other words, the red line holds steady for three more years than this chart depicts:

From http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewPage&pageID=1340

Two decades and well over a billion tax dollars later, there is no scientific evidence that programs matching the 8-point definition are effective at reducing teen pregnancy.

An Official Investigation

As part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Congress authorized funds for a scientific study of Title V abstinence-only programs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contracted this study out to Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. After years of study, Mathematica submitted its final report to HHS in April, 2007:

http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/

To maximize the opportunity for positive, reliable results, this study focused on four school programs that were especially intensive and could be especially well documented:

"All programs offered more than 50 contact hours and lasted for one or more school years, making them relatively intense among programs funded by the Title V, Section 510 grant." (Trenholm, 2007, p. 2)

"These four programs are called 'impact sites' because they had program features and staff capable of supporting a rigorous, experimental-design impact evaluation." (ibid., p. 7)

Over twelve-hundred students were involved in these four programs, with over eight-hundred students in control groups. To measure differences over time, follow-up surveys were given from 42 to 78 months after the surveys given at the beginning of each program (ibid., p. 19). It was just the sort of broad-but-detailed study that would have stood up to scrutiny from critics of abstinence-only education. Some conclusions:

"None of the individual programs had statistically significant impacts on the rate of sexual abstinence, whether measured as either always remaining abstinent or being abstinent during the last 12 months." (ibid., p. 30)

"Program and control group youth also did not differ in the number of partners with whom they had sex." (ibid., p. 31)

"Programs did not affect the age at which sexually experienced youth first engaged in sexual intercourse" (ibid., p. 31)

"Forty percent of program group youth reported that they expected to abstain from sex until marriage compared with 37 percent of control group youth, a difference that is not statistically significant" (ibid., p. 32)

"Across the individual programs, estimated impacts on unprotected sex, measured either at first intercourse or in the last 12 months, were likewise small and statistically insignificant" (ibid., p. 34)

"Ten percent of youth in both the program and control groups reported having been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant, and roughly half of them (five percent overall) reported that they had had a baby." (ibid., p. 35)

"[P]rograms raised the proportion of youth who reported that condoms never prevent HIV from an estimated 17 to 21 percent; the proportion who reported that condoms never prevent chlamydia and gonorrhea from an estimated 14 to 20 percent; and the proportion who reported that condoms never prevent herpes and HPV from an estimated 15 to 23 percent." (ibid. p. 46)

Yikes! These golden examples of abstinence-only education programs failed to alter behaviors or even attitudes. They did, however, increase the number of teens who believed condoms were useless for STI protection.

State Studies

A number of states have run evaluations on their own abstinence only programs. Unfortunately, these state studies haven't generally been models of scientific rigor. No control group, or no follow-up, or both! Although abstinence-only education failed to come out looking good in any of the studies, opponents of abstinence-only education should not rely on desired results that come from shoddy methods. Advocates for Youth put together a summary of these state studies here:

Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact

Two of these studies did include both a control group and a follow-up. California's 17-months-later follow-up found that program students were no less likely than control students to have become sexually active, pregnant, or infected (Kirby, 1997). The program was cancelled based on these results. Missouri's smaller study had similar findings (Hauser, 2004).

Abstinence Until Ready

In 2010 a rigorous scientific study came out that showed a positive effect for abstinence education:

Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months: A Randomized Controlled Trial With Young Adolescents

But there's a catch. This abstinence program deliberately did not match up with federal standards for abstinence-only education:

"It was not designed to meet federal criteria for abstinence-only programs. For instance, the target behavior was abstaining from vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse until a time later in life when the adolescent is more prepared to handle the consequences of sex. The intervention did not contain inaccurate information, portray sex in a negative light, or use a moralistic tone. The training and curriculum manual explicitly instructed the facilitators not to disparage the efficacy of condoms or allow the view that condoms are ineffective to go uncorrected. The results of this trial should not be taken to mean that all abstinence-only interventions are efficacious. This trial tested a theory-based abstinence-only intervention that would not meet federal criteria for abstinence programs and that is not vulnerable to many criticisms that have been leveled against interventions that meet federal criteria." (Jemmott, 2010)

The study's authors suggested a role for this kind of modified abstinence education program: an improvement over federally-defined abstinence education in communities that will not allow comprehensive sex education. It still lacks much of the information of comprehensive programs, but at least it doesn't encourage false and fearful beliefs...which evidently don't help anyway.

Correlations

Good news! Teen pregnancies, teen abortions, and births to teens have been falling:

Can this be attributed to abstinence-only programs? Perhaps the studies above are accurate within their particular contexts, but are missing out on big picture trends. If the states that require or emphasize abstinence-only education are generally the states with lower pregnancy rates, then it might be worth looking further into abstinence-only education. Someone did, in fact, look for this pattern.

Using information on state laws and policies in 2005, researchers assigned each state with relevant laws or policies a level from 3 to 0 (Stanger-Hall, 2011):

• Level Three - abstinence-only education, according to federal guidelines.
• Level Two - abstinence stressed, but discussion of contraception methods not forbidden.
• Level One - abstinence covered as part of comprehensive sex education.
• Level Zero - abstinence not specifically mentioned in sex education.

How did the states do?

So much for abstinence-only showing promise in the big picture. Here are comparison charts for pregnancies, abortions, and births (ibid.):

As far as teen pregnancy goes, abstinence-only education may actually be worse than sex ed that never mentions abstinence as an option!

Conclusion

Other issues aside, abstinence-only education does not improve teen abstinence. Its advocates should at the very least be seeking to reform it to be more like the "Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention" mentioned above that went against federal guidelines and showed promise. Personally, I suspect the focus on postponing all sex until marriage is so unrealistic (and not even a worthy ideal) that teen audiences are lost to the positive message that it's OK to wait until both people are ready to make a considered, responsible choice.

References

Kirby, D., Korpi, M., Barth, R.P., Cagampang, H.H. (May/June 1997). The impact of the postponing sexual involvement curriculum among youths in California. Family Planning Perspectives, 29(3). Retrieved from http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2910097.html

Hauser, D. (2004) Five years of abstinence-only-until-marriage education: Assessing the impact. Retrieved from http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/stateevaluations.pdf

Jemmott, J.B., Jemmott, L.S., Fong, G.T. (2010) Efficacy of a theory-based abstinence-only intervention over 24 months: A randomized controlled trial with young adolescents. Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 164(2), 152-159. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.267

Stanger-Hall, K.F., Hall, D.W. (October 2011). Abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates: Why we need comprehensive sex education in the U.S. Plos ONE. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0024658

Trenholm, C., Devaney, B., Fortson, K., et al. (April 2007). Impacts of four Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs final report. Retrieved from http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/

Quote of the Day: Neil Gaiman on the Power of Fiction

"I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different."

— Neil Gaiman, as quoted by The Guardian on October 15, 2013.

When Librarians Go To War: The ALA War Service 1917-18

"[T]o make better men of the soldiers as well as to make better soldiers of the men."¹

World War I lasted from 1914 to 1918, with the United States finally entering the war in 1917. In April of 1917, the American Library Association—a small organization at the time with a $24,000 yearly budget²—offered to provide professional library services to U.S. military camps and to raise the funds to do so! By the end of the war, the ALA had collected millions of dollars and book donations, built over thirty camp libraries, and employed hundreds of librarians. More importantly, the idea of—and appreciation for—free library services was spread to every corner of the nation, even to communities far from early library strongholds like Boston and New York.

Today's libraries are well-established, but there are worries about public commitment to free library services. One lesson contemporary librarians can take away from the ALA's War Service is that tapping into public interests can enable services beyond what seems possible with the existing budget. Such initiatives can then boost community appreciation for free library services.

A Bold Proposal

Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress, first proposed the idea of the ALA providing books to military men in a private meeting with an assistant to the Secretary of War.³ Between this meeting in April 1917 and the ALA's annual conference in June 1917, Putnam strategically promoted the idea and formed a committee.⁴ With this backing in place, he distributed the committee's report at the conference. The report (unsurprisingly) concluded that what the Association had before it was "an extraordinary opportunity."⁵ This sentiment was widely accepted and echoed. Soon afterward, Raymond Fosdick, the chairman of the War Department's Committee on Training Camp Activities, extended an official invitation. The American Library Association assumed responsibility for providing service to the nation's thirty-two domestic training camps.⁶

Bring Your Own Library

Each camp was populated by thirty-thousand to fifty-thousand soldiers, for a total of over 1.3 million potential readers.⁷ Government grants were not sought. Instead, the War Finance Committee of the ALA made plans to raise the money and collect supplies from private donors! The first step was to raise funds needed to run the main fundraising campaign. $50,000 was temporarily donated mainly from ALA's own resources, Baker & Taylor publishers, and the Rockefeller Foundation.⁸ These seed funds would be paid back from the main campaign, which had a goal of raising a million dollars. The Carnegie Corporation approved a $320,000 grant in September 1917 ($10,000 per camp). By April 1918, the million dollar overall goal had been reached, with an additional $750,000 beyond that!⁹

For a second fundraising drive, the ALA joined the YMCA and five other private organizations involved in training camp services for a United War Work Campaign. The ALA didn't sit back content with general advertising for the combined effort; library-themed posters and bookmarks were created and sent out in huge numbers.¹⁰ By a quirk of history, the first day of the United War Work Campaign turned out to be Armistice Day: November 11, 1918. The campaign raised $205 million anyway! The ALA's portion was 3.8 million, which allowed library services to continue until the ALA could hand off management to the various military branches in an orderly fashion from 1919 to 1921.¹¹

The ALA ran a book collection drive over the same period as the first money drive. By June 1918, over two million donated books had been collected and sent to domestic training camps.¹² Almost 300,000 had been shipped overseas, a riskier affair as several of the ships were sunk on the way by enemy submarines.¹³ Troops also received about five million magazines,¹⁴ not through ALA drives, but through a postal service program. Journals and magazines carried the following notice from the Postmaster General:

"When you finish reading this magazine place a 1-cent stamp on this notice, hand same to any postal employee and it will be placed in the hands of our soldiers or sailors at the front."¹⁵

Why bother with fundraising when books and magazines were being donated in such abundance? There was also a need to supply library buildings, pay librarians in key leadership roles, and purchase non-fiction (mostly technical) books not covered by donations.¹⁶ The ALA asked publishers to offer steep discounts on multiple copy purchases, and all major publishers agreed!¹⁷ After the Armistice, purchasing focus shifted from technical books to vocational literature. Camp librarians put together recommended reading lists on a variety of career areas and placed "Back to the Job" advertisements around the camp to market these services.¹⁸ In total, Carnegie and ALA funds were used to build forty camp libraries,¹⁹ typically including small living quarters for a librarian, which allowed long operating hours of 7 am to 10 pm every day of the week in most locations.²⁰ The bulk of the fundraising and technical services work was, however, carried out by public librarian volunteers.²¹

The Subordinated Majority

Sex discrimination was strong at the beginning of the War, but became increasingly challenged as the draft pulled men out of their hoarded leadership positions. The library profession's composition as a whole was about four women to every man,²² but the ALA itself enforced an unwritten rule against women being paid for work in camp libraries. As protests to the ALA leadership and directly to the War Department grew, Herbert Putnam first falsely claimed that the ALA was only following military rules (as anyone could see by the women employed in private YWCA hostess houses). He then promised a greater role for women, but this was a transparent attempt to defuse complaints without actually doing anything. Finally, Putnam acted as if the protestors were disparaging the work done by the women who had been working in camp libraries (often running them in practice) without pay or status. He relented at last, gracelessly implying that he was only swayed by the voices of male librarians.²³

By the summer of 1918, women were officially in charge of eight of the thirty-two camp libraries.²⁴ Blanche Galloway of the Pelham Bay Naval Station was the first woman to be paid for directing an ALA camp library. In September of 1918, Ms. Galloway spoke at the New York State Library Association's annual meeting:

"The wonderful opportunities which the library has to help these young men from all stations and walks of life, the one great thing that makes it worth while is the fact that the library influence is a leveling up and never down. Every man who seeks help here is going to be able to do something better than he has done it before. This is the kind of democracy we are all proud to have a part in establishing."²⁵

It's crazy to think the ALA had held back Galloway and other passionate librarians; it's inspiring to know she persevered for the sake of her "young men."

Value

The increasing role of technology in early twentieth-century warfare made greater than ever intellectual demands on fighters. It was now "a war of mechanism and of exact science."²⁶

"At one typical camp a single day's circulation included books on the following: French history, mechanics, topography and strategy in war, self propelled vehicles, hand grenades, field entrenchments, bridges, chemistry, physics, astronomy, hydraulics, electricity, medieval history, calculus, civil engineering, geography, American history, surveying, materials of construction, general history, masonry, concrete. About three-fourths of the books taken out were non-fiction."²⁷

This should make it clear that relying on second-hand, outdated gift books from civilians would not have been adequate to the task of making better soldiers of the men. Camp libraries—and especially overseas book distribution—also addressed psychological needs. Major General Glenn of Camp Sherman gave library materials credit for "producing contentment" in men drafted into the new environment of military life.²⁸ Mystery and adventure novels were especially popular. The more elitist librarians liked to tell each other stories of patrons asking for high-brow literature, confident they were making better men of the soldiers.²⁹ As mentioned above, camp librarians took on the role of occupational counselors toward the end.

Beyond reading material itself, libraries provided a quiet place to get away from the usual routine. According to one soldier at Camp Devens:

"Your alcoves are godsends. The barrack's social room in which 75 to 125 are talking and playing cards, where a piano and phonograph are rivaling one another, and where at any moment a basketball may knock your head sideways, is certainly no decent place to read, let alone trying to do any studying."³⁰

Spreading an Idea

Support for the war effort was high, as shown by the generosity of the donors and volunteers who made the ALA's War Service such a fantastic success. Soldiers' need for reading materials would have been a good enough motivation by itself; but even from the beginning, the ALA had an eye on promoting the value of professionally staffed free libraries. In a paper handed out at the Association's 1917 conference, Frank Hill and George Utley said, "if we succeed in this emergency in rendering national service, libraries are going to be a national and community force as never before." Otherwise, libraries would be "looked on as weak, dreary, go-sit-in-the-corner affairs that are not worth public support."³¹

Public library services were familiar to soldiers from the more progressive, urban areas. This wasn't true for many soldiers from poor or remote regions. Camp librarians often had to explain that borrowing was free.³² The war brought everyone together, then sent them back with raised expectations. The War Service was, in a sense, a public library advocacy campaign in disguise.

Still, it's important to understand that the War Service's most clear-cut accomplishment was its direct effect on domestic military camps. Overseas support was relatively weak. The ALA's post-war "Enlarged Program" campaign was a failed, overconfident attempt to grow the Association's wealth and influence in the new style, but without the unifying effect of patriotic fever.³³ Two federal bills which would have brought national support to library services fell flat in 1919, with more of the same in the 1920s.³⁴ The ALA had caught a wave during the war and found that it couldn't do the same in peacetime. It would take more time and steady political alliances to bring about substantial nation-wide support for public libraries.³⁵ The War Service years were an exciting time in U.S. library history that showed what can be accomplished by paying attention to current events and jumping at new opportunities. It was significant part—but only a part—of a much longer process of transforming public library service from a luxury found in liberal cities to an assumed part of American life.

1. Theodore W. Koch. War Service of the American Library Association (Washington, D.C: A.L.A. War Service, 1918), viii. 
2. Arthur P. Young. Books For Sammies: The American Library Association And World War I (Place of  publication: Publisher, Year of publication), 10.
3. Young, Books for Sammies, 10.
4. ibid., 11.
5. ibid., 12. 
6. ibid., 13.
7. ibid., 38.
8. ibid., 20.
9. ibid., 21.
10. ibid., 23.
11. ibid., 87.
12. Koch, War Service, 18.
13. Young, Books for Sammies, 63.
14. Koch, War Service, 18.
15. Committee on Public Information, "Regulation for Forwarding Magazines To Men At Front," The Official Bulletin (Washington, DC), July 18, 1917. 
16. Young, Books for Sammies, 20.
17. ibid., 27.
18. ibid., 55-56.
19. ibid., 25.
20. ibid., 46.
21. ibid., 94.
22. ibid., 126.
23. ibid., 34-35.
24. ibid.
25. N. Louise Ruckteshler. "Library Week at Lake Placid Club, September 23-28, 1918." New York Libraries.6, no. 5. (Nov. 1918): 134.
26. Koch, War Service, vi.
27. ibid.
28. ibid., 16.
29. ibid., 26.
30. ibid., 27.
31. Young, Books for Sammies, 19.
32. Koch, War Service, 22.
33. Young, Books for Sammies, 90.
34. ibid., 97.
35. ibid., 98.

Bibliography

Committee on Public Information, "Regulation for Forwarding Magazines To Men At Front," The Official Bulletin (Washington, DC), July 18, 1917.

Koch, Theodore W. War Service of the American Library Association. Washington, DC: A.L.A. War Service, 1918.

Ruckteshler, N. Louise. "Library Week at Lake Placid Club, September 23-28, 1918." New York Libraries.6, no. 5. (Nov. 1918).

Young, Arthur P. Books For Sammies: The American Library Association And World War I. Pittsburgh, PA: Beta Phi Mu, 1981.

Christian to Agnostic: A Short Explanation

[I'm making this the latest post because a family member asked over the weekend. This was originally posted here on June 11, 2012 and written around 2008.]

    During my last year at Iowa State University, I stopped believing Christianity — or anything like it — is actually true. This came at the end of several years of study which began with the opposite goal: learning how to show others that Christianity is true. Talk about backfiring! Instead of finding more and stronger justifications for Christian belief, I lost even my starting justifications. All remaining evidence was compatible with Christianity being an entirely manmade religion, so I concluded that's probably all it is. I drew the same conclusion about other religions. If there is a God at all, it's not one concerned with setting us straight on religious matters.

    I was raised in the Churches of Christ sect. Early on, I was under the impression that everyone in the world believed the same things I was taught in Sunday School. Why wouldn't I? Everything from Biblical history to theology was presented to me as a matter of uncontroversial fact. If someone didn't worship God, that was only an obedience problem as it is with kids who don't mind their parents. I accepted God's offer of salvation with unquestioning faith. I believed God had forgiven my sins and would raise me to live in Heaven with other Christians forever. Prayer, praise, and scripture reading were not a burden but a joy.

    That joy started to sour when I was sent to an interdenominational Christian high school. You see, the Churches of Christ teach baptism as an essential step in accepting salvation; they even refer to baptism as "obeying the Gospel." By contrast, all the teachers and most of the students at my new school believed that only faith was necessary to be saved. This meant most of the Christians at school had not obeyed the Gospel and were still on their way to never-ending torment in Hell. Yet these were not apathetic or rebellious people; many were clearly striving to understand and submit to God's will. How could people serving God to the best of their knowledge deserve eternal torment? And the more I thought about Hell, the more I began to question its justice. I realized that no human — no matter how monstrous — could cause as much suffering as an eternity of hellfire. For a long time, I didn't doubt the truth of any of this, but I did start to see the next world as a far greater horror than even the worst temporary evil in this world.

    Just as high school opened my eyes to divisions among Christians, college life put me in direct contact with a wider array of religious beliefs. I went from only hearing debates about the meaning of Bible verses to hearing people claim the Bible wasn't inspired by God at all. So I did what I always do when challenged: study up! I already knew the book of Daniel contained detailed prophetic descriptions of Alexander the Great and the kings who followed him, so I started looking into arguments from supernatural prophecy. I was confident I could show that the Bible was more than a collection of human writings. But it didn't take long for my confidence to turn into disappointment.

    Daniel was supposedly written in the sixth century BC while the Jews were exiled in Babylon. Among other things, it describes Alexander's fourth century BC eastward conquest and the fate of the empire after his death. Even without names, the descriptions match up with secular history too well to be a lucky guess. Or at least, they match until the 160s BC when the prophecies become much more elaborate…then go wrong. See where I'm going with this? Many Biblical scholars believe Daniel was written during the 160s BC as if it contained ancient prophecies leading up to the ongoing Maccabean Revolt. The author simply wrote history and current events disguised as prophecy, then got the future parts wrong. This is a mainstream view in the Catholic Church, probably because their Bibles still contain histories of the revolt, which happened during the mysterious "intertestamental" period as far as Protestants are concerned. I was disappointed in my own Bible teachers for failing to know or failing to tell me about any of this.

    I needed to find prophecy immune to date-based skepticism, so I turned to messianic prophecy. Figured I'd start with Matthew and look up Old Testament references as I got to them. Big mistake. It turns out Matthew had little regard for the context of his quotes. The original passages concerning "Immanuel," "out of Egypt," and "Rachel weeping for her children" were written about specific situations far removed from the Gospel plot. I was amazed to find that the first few pages of Matthew mistreat the Jewish scriptures so badly no one could fault a curious Jew for picking up a New Testament and setting it right back down a minute later. Are the other messianic prophecies merely less obvious impositions of new meaning on old scriptures? My studies were inconclusive. With Christian preconceptions, it's easy to see Jesus in the Old Testament. But without those assumptions, all "messianic prophecies" can be reasonably understood as merely human Jewish hopes. For example, the servant described in Isaiah 53 can be understood as religiously faithful Jews who suffered through the Babylonian exile along with the unfaithful Jews who brought about the judgement. As a reward and justification for their suffering, God would end the exile and set Israel above all other nations forever. The exile ended, but the rest proved too optimistic. Later Jews reinterpreted the passage as a future event, then Christians used it to build a theology to justify the suffering of Jesus on the cross. This naturalistic interpretation is strongly in line with the overall historical context of Isaiah 40-55. I eventually had to give up on using prophecy to argue for a supernatural Bible.

    What would it take to show the truth of Christian belief over alternatives? Critical evidence, i.e. evidence which is compatible with Christian belief but not compatible with alternative beliefs. Take the book of Daniel. It fails to be critical evidence because it can be explained as history rather than amazing prophecy. However, Daniel would be critical evidence if compelling, secular evidence were found that Daniel's prophecies actually were written in the sixth (not the second) century BC. Skeptics who acknowledge the uncanny accuracy of Daniel between those centuries would be unable to maintain their belief that Daniel was written by human means.

    I continued looking for any critical evidence which favored Christianity over the alternatives. Instead, I kept finding critical evidence against the fundamentalist Christianity I was taught at both church and school. A quick rundown:

    I had believed first-century apostles finalized the Bible as I knew it and that any later ideas or writings were either superfluous or deviations from true Christianity.
  …but then I learned that the New Testament's table of contents was settled much later by distinctively Catholic Christians who also affirmed a larger Old Testament. I couldn't trust my sixty-six book Bible had only inspired books and all the inspired books without believing God whimsically guided fourth century Catholics to put the New Testament together right and AD-era Jews to put the Old Testament together right.

    I had believed the Gospels were independent witnesses to the life of Jesus, by the traditional authors.
  …but then I learned that the first three Gospels are textually dependent on each other like three homework essays showing signs of collaboration; scholars call this the "synoptic problem." Not such a big deal for Luke since the author admits to putting together earlier accounts, but I found it impossible to believe Matthew was written by an apostle of Jesus who only bothered mangling other accounts instead of writing his own.

    I had believed all scriptures were preserved word-for-word in their original languages.
  …but then I learned that the New Testament authors usually quoted an Old Testament with many subtle differences from the Old Testament I knew. For example, Matthew 21 depicts children praising Jesus during the triumphal entry. Jesus defends their actions to critics by quoting Psalm 8 as, "Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise for Yourself." Yet Psalm 8 reads, "From the mouths of infants and nursing babes You have established strength." I realized either Jesus had a corrupted Old Testament or I did.

    I had believed the Bible accurately reports speech, though not necessarily everything a person said.
  …but then I learned that the Bible inaccurately reports speech even when accuracy would have been just as easy. For example, Mark 11:1-3 reports Jesus asking for a single donkey while Matthew 21:1-3 reports him asking for plural donkeys. This isn't an omission or a matter of translation into English; the words in Jesus' mouth are just different. If it's ok to mess with the speech of God incarnate, what else might have been adjusted?

    I had believed Biblical history was reliable and any secular history that disagreed was simply mistaken.
  …but then I learned that the Bible starts with fictional creation and flood stories. This might have been fine if they were treated as myths-with-a-message (like the Narnia novels or the Parable of the Vineyard Workers), but Eden and the flood are part of the main historical narrative. Luke even traces Jesus' genealogy back through David to Noah and Adam. I had to start worrying that other parts of the Bible might also be fiction presented as fact.

    As I was discovering problems with my fundamentalist view of the Bible, I heard about "progressive" Christians who get around all of the above by treating the Bible as a fallible human work: a book about God but not from God. This lets progressives write off gender roles as a cultural vestige and distance God from troublesome Old Testament morals such as enslaving foreigners (Lev 25:44-46), killing children as part of genocide (1 Sam 15:3), executing apostates (Deut 13:6-11), and taking virgins as sexual spoils of war (Deut 21:10-13, Num 31:17-18). Progressive Christians usually also deny Hell doctrine on the basis of incompatibility with a morally praiseworthy God. They've effectively reshaped Christianity to fit modern knowledge and moral sense. After all, there are still many wise, good, and possible things in the Bible after cutting out the foolish, evil, and false. I tried to adopt a progressive Christian view, but it was short-lived. I didn't see how a God interested in forming loving relationships with humanity or even in being worshipped as a good God would be so hands-off in allowing his character to be slandered by his own followers.

    I began to see Christianity as "just another human religion." That's the phrase that got stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. I identify with stories of other deconverts who said that once they were capable of seeing Christian faith as a product of mere human psychology and culture, they suddenly had great trouble taking off those new "glasses." (Or putting the Christian glasses back on, if you prefer.) Take prayer, for example. The doctrine that all prayers are answered "yes," "no," or "not yet" is hard to take seriously after seeing it as precisely the doctrine people would invent if no prayer were ever heard by a God. A false Christianity would also neatly explain why the Holy Spirit does not counteract the ever increasing schisms among Christians. Or why there seems to be needless suffering in the world even though an all-good, all-powerful God would ensure all suffering is for the best. And finally, why the best predictors of Christian faith are where and to whom a person is born.

    Though my beliefs had changed, I didn't want to be an unbeliever so I kept looking for reasons to think some form of Christianity is true. What if I had simply missed something? So I deliberately put my new skepticism at risk by continuing to engage with apologetics. I did come to see problems with many popular skeptical arguments and I also came to appreciate some of the more refined defenses of Christianity, especially those of Alston and Plantinga. But in the end these were only defenses of the possibility of Christian Theism, not critical reasons to believe any of it is true. Then I realized something which gave me confidence I wasn't missing some hard-to-find good reason for belief: if there is an all-powerful God who "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," it would be in God's own interest and power to make religious truth unmistakably clear so that "all men" are able — if willing — to respond to his offer of salvation. For this reason, I take the lack of clear critical evidence for Christian belief as strong positive evidence against Christian belief.

    Where does this leave me? Not too different in day-to-day terms. I found it doesn't take belief in God and an afterlife to believe in other people and this life. If it matters how I'm treated, I know it matters how I treat others. I can't rely on thinking God will right every injustice, but then I hadn't believed unending paradise and torment were just fates since high school. I now believe it's up to us to correct injustice and suffering in the world. It's also up to us to preserve our planet for those to come, with no scheduled remake of a new heavens and new earth. And if anything, I have an increased sense of humility from realizing the universe wasn't made just for us. No single religious image ever brought out the awe I feel looking at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and trying to grasp the sheer scale of what it reveals in one tiny, seemingly dark patch of the night sky. Is there a God hidden beyond it all? Maybe, maybe not. Though I remain open to the possibility of a God who hasn't bothered to reveal its identity and desires to humanity, I lean toward a fully natural order because God-explanations have been steadily retreating in the face of natural explanations. I doubt we'll ever run out of unanswered questions, so there will always be room to project religious answers onto the unknown, but I'm comfortable waiting until there's good reason to believe those answers are correct.

Moral Training Wheels

"Finally, on the theistic hypothesis God holds all persons morally accountable for their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Good ultimately triumphs over evil, and we shall finally see that we do live in a moral universe after all. Despite the inequities of this life, in the end the scales of God’s justice will be balanced. Thus, the moral choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance. We can with consistency make moral choices which run contrary to our self-interest and even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice, knowing that such decisions are not empty and ultimately meaningless gestures."

— William Lane Craig, "Can We Be Good Without God?"

A friend of mine recently scolded her cat for starting to play with an electrical cord. It wouldn't do any good to lecture the cat about how dangerous electricity can be, so an imposed association between electrical cords and punishment are needed to keep her cat safe when no one is watching. The same applies to toddlers. Adult humans avoid chewing on electrical cords because they don't want to be shocked. No stand-in motivation needed!

When it comes to moral situations, some philosophers try to show that acting morally is in our own best interest, either all the time or often enough that we tend to come out ahead in life if we cultivate moral habits. Other philosophers (and many preachers) claim that acting morally is in our own best interest because we will be punished or rewarded in an afterlife. The quote at the top of this post is such an example: William Lane Craig believes that self-sacrifice is "empty" if it doesn't eventually turn into huge rewards for the person doing the sacrificing.

In other words, there's a tendency to reduce morality to self-interest. I believe this is a mistake. While it's true that moral action often works in our own favor, the essence of morality is other-interest.

But there's a problem: some people don't have much in the way of other-interest. How do we convince them to act in the interests of others anyway? Impose an association between harming others and punishment, or an association between helping others and reward. It's another kind of stand-in motivation.

Punishment and reward are training wheels for human beings who can grow in understanding (to better achieve what they want and avoid what they don't) and who can grow in empathy (to better care about what others want). Training wheels might keep your bike from falling over, but you aren't truly riding until you no longer need them. When I read things like the quote at the top of this post, I see a desire for perfect training wheels: the appearance of moral justice without any need to act out of the interest of others.

The Terrible and Terribly Important Notion of Fiction Genres

Genres are a marketing ploy. Genres are a barrier to discovery. Genres are a curse we can't do without.

Let me back up a minute and give you some context. I'm interning at the county jail library this summer and fall. Well, "library" would be more accurate because it's a room of over ten-thousand books thrown together without organization. Staff members have kept some very popular authors and series set aside, but any inmate requests outside of those are unlikely to be filled. There's no way to locate or even confirm the existence of those items. My job is to do a lot of the grunt work in turning this pile into a collection.

Inmates can request a particular title, author, or genre. They won't be able to browse the shelves directly. I knew that if I had a big "General Fiction" category, not many people are going to write: "Please find me some General Fiction novels!" How utterly boring! Might as well throw out every less popular author in that entire section.

I needed to come up with enough genres to put an interesting genre label on everything, even titles not traditionally considered "genre fiction." After much agonizing, I came up with the following scheme:

A cheating category. Classics are, roughly, pre-20th century books that are still reprinted or re-translated. Sherlock Holmes and Dracula would fit, but they are so strongly expected in other genres that they don't count.

Traditional "Genre Fiction"

Sure, these can be separate, but readership and the works themselves very frequently cross over. Plus, that's a rockin' dragon sticker. What goes here? Advanced technology, strange worlds, and supernatural things that most people agree aren't real.

Anything explicitly labeled "romance" or from a romance imprint goes here, even if it has strong SF/Fantasy elements. Also included are books with descriptions that exclusively describe a romantic relationship, i.e. not just as a major element in a story focused on another kind of struggle. It's no accident that I picked a non-gendered sticker.

Like romance, westerns are predominately identified by their marketing. Although there are many titles that mix romance and western themes, it's usually easy to tell romantic westerns from western romances. Unfortunately, this distinction tends to line up with marketing to men vs. marketing to women. This is one way that genre labels stifle discovery by exaggerating the separation between quite similar works.

Some mysteries are labeled as such, but it makes sense to be more inclusive than that. Whenever the plot centers on discovering the identity of a criminal, it's a mystery. SF/Fantasy mysteries still get dragon stickers.

General Fiction and Literature

With "genre fiction" out of the way, what can be done about the great big Miscellaneous category found in most bookstores and libraries? I broke it down into three parts...

An arbitrary but popular line to draw is that fiction set during or before the World Wars counts as historical fiction. Unless it fits western conventions, or those for SF/Fantasy, or mysteries. Even with all of these exclusions, these shelves are bursting.

Thrillers is the section for spies, soldiers, and serial killers. Film versions of thriller books go under Action/Adventure. Crime fiction can go here if the reader finds out the antagonist's identity early on and the big question is whether the protagonist can do something about it.

Technically, thrillers tend to be realistic in the sense that they are contemporary stories without fantasy or science fiction elements. Realistic fiction concerns relatively regular people in relatively common life situations, though not necessarily from the reader's own culture. Film versions of these books tend to go under Drama. Elements of romance, thriller, and mystery genres can be present, so long as they don't overwhelm the focus on complex contemporary characters.

What About...

It might be OK for Barnes & Noble to have a Christian Fiction section, but it doesn't sit so well with librarians because it can imply that the other fiction either is less suitable for Christians to read or is insufficiently orthodox. State librarians are not in the position to issue or promote religious imprimaturs. Plus, it pulls books away from from all of the other genre shelves where they might find a broader readership. The Chronicles of Narnia, Left Behind, and Seasons of Grace are much more at home in SF/Fantasy, Thrillers, and Realistic Fiction respectively.

That said, some readers are publishers and readers who favor books with strong religious themes. Other readers feel strongly about avoiding books from such publishers, either from religious disagreement or for the same reason a person who likes romantic fiction might distrust the quality standards of "romance mill" publishers. So, in addition to a primary genre sticker, books from such publishers or imprints (e.g. Harlequin's Heartsong) will have an "Inspirational" label:

Not the most apt term, but it's a widely-understood convention that further distances librarians from the legal and ethical issues of judging some works to be "Christian Fiction."

Easy and Limiting

The single best article I've read on fiction genres is Ursula K. LeGuin's "Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love" (Public Libraries, Vol. 44, Is. 1, p. 21 [PDF]). I recommend reading the whole thing. LeGuin would prefer a world where all fiction is interfiled by author's last name, removing the prejudice of genre systems. But she knows her vision would be opposed:

"Consumerism also rules. If the books aren’t labeled, if they aren’t shelved by genre, if they don’t have a little bitty label saying SF or M or YA, a whole lot of customers and library users will come storming the counter or the desk, shouting, 'Where is my fiction fix? I want a fantasy, I can’t read all that realistic stuff! I want a mystery, I can’t read all that plotless stuff! I want a masterpiece of grim realism, I can’t read all that imaginary stuff! I want mindless fluff, I can’t read all that literary stuff! Etc., etc.'

To give each reader an annotated author-title list of whatever their fiction addiction is, so they can go find the books on the shelves, is a perfectly fair solution, offered by many libraries. But addicts don’t like it. They want books to be easy the way fast food is easy. They want to go to the shelf and stick out their hand and get a fix."

For my particular situation of no-browsing-allowed, sticking out a hand (so to speak) is the best supported scenario for discovering new books. Can public and school libraries do better? I'm having trouble finding references right now, but I've heard of libraries interfiling all fiction and using small, colored genre dots on the spines. The nice thing is that there's no need to pick a "primary" genre, so those readers of western romances and romantic westerns are more likely to notice similarly-themed works and go exploring outside of their traditional haunts. Heck, I've seen things like inspirational-historical fiction-romance and SF-mystery-thriller. These books could easily be picking up new readers through providing more genre information than traditional genre shelving supports.

Library catalogs could also help, but usable catalogs are still the stuff of science fiction. For now, physical genre markers are still the best way of directing many people to titles they'll feel comfortable trying out.

Recipe: Maple Twist

My father's side of the family is Mennonite in the strongly traditional way many families in Boston are Catholic. When I see women in old fashioned dresses and bonnets, I think: cousins! But as readers of this blog will know, I've not stuck with the tradition myself. Still, there are three ways Mennonite heritage has left its mark on me: a cool-headed temperament, a simple "yes" or "no" for my word, and warm maple twist.

This is my go-to dessert when I need to bake something impressive in a few hours. Plus, the shaping part is fun!


1. Make (Most Of) The Dough

2 and 3/4 cup general-purpose flour (385g)
3 tablespoon sugar (40g)
1/2 teaspoon salt (3g)
2 and 1/4 teaspoon yeast (8g)
1 teaspoon maple extract (6g) [imitation is fine]
1 egg

Mix this stuff and set aside.


2. Warm Up Milk and Butter

3/4 cup milk (156g)
1/4 c unsalted butter, melted (62g)

Use a microwave, or put the butter on the stove at the lowest setting and apply patience or foresight. Mix with the milk and make sure the resulting liquid is warm on your skin but not uncomfortably hot, otherwise your yeast will be sad.


3. Combine

Add the milk and butter to the mix set aside in step one. Knead until smooth.

Not smooth

Smooth

Put the ball of dough into a greased container and cover it. Let rise for an hour at room temperature.


4. Make Filling

This can be done any time during or just after the dough rising hour. Mix together:

1/2 cup sugar (105g)
1 teaspoon maple extract (6g)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (2g)
1/3 cup chopped almonds (28g) [or whatever you like]

5. Turn One Into Three

When the hour is up, start melting another 1/4 cup of unsalted butter (62g). You'll need it shortly.

Now, take the dough ball out of its container and split it into three equal parts. Flatten out each part into a circle about 9 inches or 23 cm in diameter.


6. Stack'm

Put one of the dough circles onto a greased pan, brush it with the freshly melted butter, then sprinkle about a third of the filling on top.

Put the second circle of dough on top, butter, and sprinkle. Same for the third.

If the whole thing has contracted a bit, just flatten it back to full size.


7. Slice'm

Find a traditional, Mennonite shot glass...or anything around that size (I use the lid of my Thermos). Press your doohickey down in the middle of the dough to act as a guide and to hold the middle down.

Find a traditional, Mennonite ulu...or anything sharp enough to cut dough. Make a cut from the edge to maybe half an inch from the thing you're holding down in the middle.

Then do the same on the opposite side. And between each of these cuts, making four evenly-spaced cuts total.

Then cut between each of the original four cuts, making eight cuts total. Finally, cut between each of the eight cuts—but not quite so far—making sixteen cuts.

8. Twist'm

Pull each of the sixteen wedges out slightly then twist!

I like do about six or seven half turns with my right thumb and forefinger while I use my left hand to hold the last twisted wedge in place and apply light pressure to the doohickey in the center (left hand not shown here because it's holding the camera).

A convenient way to keep the twists from contracting back toward the center is to bend each one around the last, forming a big spiral.

9. Bake

Cover and let rise for another half hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 F (190 C).

Bake for about twenty minutes until golden brown. This is thick enough to justify using aluminum foil on top for part of the time.


10. Drizzle

While the twist is cooling on the pan or presentation plate, mix together:

1/8 cup unsalted butter, melted (31g)
1 cup powdered sugar (83g)
2 tablespoons milk (28g)
1/2 teaspoon maple extract (3g)

Apply icing liberally to produce the final result:

Big Data and the Future of Collections Management

[A presentation I gave for Collections Management class. You can follow the clicks in this embedded Prezi to simulate the experience.]



"Big data" is a big buzzword in business and technology circles. If some had asked me a year ago to define big data, I would have talked about credit card and credit score companies. I would have talked about Google harvesting email content. I would have talked about social networking graphs.

[click]

But this sharp increase in data collection is just the first step. The soul of big data is in its use. [click] And the magic of big data is that its use is [click] not predetermined.

To see what I mean, let's take a minute to think about scientific method. [click] Remember this from grade school?

• Form a hypothesis.
• Design an experiment.
• Then: Collect data.
• Analyze data.
• Draw a conclusion.

Big data allows a different approach. [click] Data collection happens first. And here's the key: this data is more or less complete. There's no need to design an experiment to generate some data that's relevant to a specific hypothesis; we just work from all the data! This is a data driven approach to finding patterns, including patterns we never would have hypothesized.

For example [click], when Walmart's analysts searched their sales history for interesting patterns, they found a connection between [click] looming hurricanes and the sale of [click] flashlights! Ok, that's not too surprising. They also found a strong correlation between hurricanes and [click] pop tarts! Who knew? Even individual pop tart purchasers may not have perceived they're part of a pattern; a wider perspective was required. So Walmart did the obvious thing, they waited for a hurricane and shipped truckloads of extra pop tarts to select stores. They sold like hotcakes! Or should I say, like pop tarts before a hurricane? [click]

The authors of the book on which this talk is based wrote:

"Big data refers to things one can do at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller one." p. 6

Let's see what another retail giant has accomplished with large scale data. [click]

Target sometimes advertises by sending 'targeted' coupons to individual customers. It's like Amazon.com's personalized recommendations. Of course, the better the match between coupons and customer needs, the higher the chance that people will get in their cars, drive to Target, and buy things!

Here's the creepy part. Target's analysts wanted to know if they could identify pregnant customers. So they started with customers who had registered for baby showers and searched for patterns in their purchase histories. It turns out that customers who purchase cotton balls and unscented lotion are more likely to be pregnant, especially if this is followed up by certain vitamins and minerals or over twenty other pregnancy-correlated items. In fact, this progression of purchases can even produce a projected due date! There's even a story about a father who came in to Target upset because his teenage daughter had received coupons for baby cribs. Target knew before he did!

If big data is sounding powerful and a little scary, you've got the right idea. [click]

Now we're ready to talk about big data in the context of public library collections management. [click]

What's the difference between a library and a book store? One difference is that book stores are ultimately about making money, while libraries are ultimately about serving their patrons. As we saw with Target, big data can be used to trade away privacy for profit. It seems inevitable that retail stores will use big data in more and more invasive ways [click]. If this happens, all libraries need to do is maintain their reputation for privacy and their value will grow. It would even make sense for collection development policies to mention a preference for materials of confidential interest.[click]

On the other hand, libraries are very well situated to take advantage of big data techniques. Unlike Walmart or Kmart transactions, every checkout is tied to a loyalty card...I mean a library card. I can't tell you what patterns a team of big data analysts would reveal in library data. But when we find our equivalent to pop-tarts or unscented lotion, we might order more or fewer of certain materials, rearrange items, or set up displays at more effective times.[click] [click]

Obviously, there's some tension between maintaining privacy and using library data to its fullest. We could add a line to due date phone calls: "This is Lincoln Public Libraries. We are calling to inform you that you have an item due on Thursday... and you might also enjoy Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy!" Yes, that might scare people away. Thankfully, libraries don't need to rely on their own data to take a big data approach. [click]

We can use public data. Even without big data analysis, individual collection managers can (and should!) follow best seller lists, social networking trends, and top news stories. Big data analysis goes deeper. It might be possible to predict the next big things before they make their way to the top. Libraries could be ready to meet demands for the next 50 Shades, not lag weeks behind retail stores. If a historically-themed movie is coming out, it would make sense to review materials on that subject, but only if public interest really is picking up; big data might be able to tell the difference. [click]

In summary, big data is powerful and a little scary. It's not something for the average librarian to use directly, but I believe it is everyone's responsibility to steer the profession between the extremes of neglecting and overusing this technology. We need to adapt to big data, but we also need to adapt big data to our professional ethics.

Thank you. [click]

On "Filtering and the First Amendment"

Since Deborah Caldwell-Stone's American Libraries article "Filtering and the First Amendment" covers similar ground to my earlier essay "Public Forum Doctrine in U.S. v. American Library Association," I'd like to do some friendly nit-picking.

Quick Background

In the United States, public and school libraries are bribed (rather than coerced) into filtering Internet access for minors. This is done through CIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act. In 2003, the constitutionality of CIPA was challenged but upheld in U.S. v. American Library Association.

Clarity

Caldwell-Stone's article is helpful because misconceptions about the requirements of CIPA are indeed widespread:

"Often, it is because the institutions and individuals responsible for implementing these policies misunderstand or misinterpret CIPA and the Supreme Court decision upholding the law. Among these misunderstandings is a belief that an institution will lose all federal funding if it does not block all potentially inappropriate sites to the fullest extent practicable, or that the Supreme Court decision authorized mandatory filtering for adults and youths alike. Another mistaken belief is that it does not violate the First Amendment to impose restrictive filtering policies that deny adults full access to constitutionally protected materials online." (Caldwell-Stone, 2013)

I appreciate the way she raises awareness that CIPA policies aren't legal requirements and that no library's filtering has been judged too lax to qualify. If a library doesn't want to filter, they don't have to filter! If a library wants to filter lightly, they can still collect CIPA funds.

Not So Clear

My nit-picking concerns the last sentence of the quote above. Caldwell-Stone is correct that US v. ALA did not authorize mandatory filtering for adults, but the Supreme Court didn't forbid it either. Legally, it's an open question. Caldwell-Stone evidently feels strongly that such filtering violates the First Amendment (a very respectable position to have!), but it's easy for readers to be misled when legal facts and legal hopes are presented in parallel phrases.

This bit is also problematic:

"Does CIPA itself, or the 2003 Supreme Court opinion, actually authorize a library to limit an adult’s access to constitutionally protected speech? A close reading of the district court’s opinion reveals that it fails to address the Supreme Court’s directive: Libraries subject to CIPA should disable filters for adult users to assure their First Amendment rights." (Caldwell-Stone, 2013)

The Supreme Court gave no such "directive." There was no majority opinion (at all), and no such directive can be found in the plurality opinion. In fact, none of the six judges concurring in judgment said so. The Court's language is along these lines:

"Assuming that such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties, any such concerns are dispelled by the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled." (US v. ALA, Opinion of the Court)

Note the qualifier "assuming." The Court isn't taking a position on whether or not "such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties." Suppose it were a problem for libraries to block constitutionally protected speech: easy disabling would be an antidote. Suppose it weren't a problem to block such speech: now it's an unnecessary antidote. Since this specific case didn't hinge on the constitutionality of "such erroneous blocking," the judges didn't—and couldn't—rule on the issue.

Another concurring judge wrote:

"If some libraries do not have the capacity to unblock specific Web sites or to disable the filter or if it is shown that an adult user’s election to view constitutionally protected Internet material is burdened in some other substantial way, that would be the subject for an as-applied challenge, not the facial challenge made in this case." (US v. ALA, Kennedy's concurrence)

It's entirely reasonable to conclude that a library with mandatory filtering for adults might be judged as violating First Amendment rights, just as a state denying same-sex marriage licenses might be judged (very soon, one hopes) to be violating equal protection rights. Then again, either of these situations might be judged to be constitutional.

One last concurring judge:

"Perhaps local library rules or practices could further restrict the ability of patrons to obtain 'overblocked' Internet material. [...] But we are not now considering any such local practices. We here consider only a facial challenge to the Act itself." (US v. ALA, Breyer's concurrence)

Hopefully it's clear at this point that mandatory Internet filtering for adults is not clearly unconstitutional or constitutional. I applaud Caldwell-Stone for her explanations and her advocacy; I just wish she would separate the two a little more explicitly.

References

Caldwell-Stone, D. (April 2, 2013). Filtering and the first amendment. American Libraries. Retrieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/04022013/filtering-and-first-amendment

United States v. American Library Association, 539 U.S. 194 (2003).

Quote of the Day: Moon on Parental Despotism

"We need to take a hard look at the rights of the young to access information. It is an issue we have avoided for far too long. And what seems to have become our traditional stance—that it is up to parents to control the reading and viewing of their offspring—may be politically expedient but it isn't particularly principled.

The arrival of compulsory education provided one escape route for those children whose parents seemed determined to establish a dynasty of ignorance. Some parents still struggle to protect their children from education but, by and large, society has come to accept education as among the rights of the young. Society usually does things for selfish reasons, however, and this may be no more than acceptance that the need for an educated next generation to continue or improve upon what we have wrought is so important that it must even supersede the rather despotic rights we have customarily accorded to parents.

The question for us, though, is do we then accept that the child's or young adult's right of access to knowledge stops when the school doors close? Do we believe that education happens only in school, that libraries are not educational, that they are less important, less relevant than schools? If we do not believe these things, then how come we do not protest as strongly when an individual parent bars the door of the library (or the adult section) to his or her child as when the governor of a state stands in the schoolhouse door and bars entry to children who seek nothing more dangerous than an equal crack at a decent education?"

— from Eric Moon's inaugural address as president for the American Library Association at the conference in Detroit in 1977, as quoted in Lillian Gerhardt's critical editorial on page 9 of the Sept. 1977 issue of School Library Journal.