After I saw the report, I went to check it out. Some of it seems informative, but if you read far enough down the list, it gets into some really racy topics and the language is a bit...hmmmm, how should I say....less than mature. At least my mom taught me the clinical terms and the proper way to refer to stuff (or not to refer to it at all because it's gross!
)
Anyway, I don't think it belongs on a teen website. If a parent wants to buy their child a book or access the website for them and discuss things together, that's one thing. Then again, some parents don't talk to their kids about sex. I'm just not sure I would want my child learning it from this site.
http://www.khou.com/news/local/educatio ... ef1be.html
Parent says library Web page too sexually explicit
10:59 PM CST on Tuesday, November 18, 2003
By Jeremy Rogalski / 11 News
HOUSTON -- Some parents are upset with the Harris County Public Library. There is a library Web site that is geared towards teens, the question is whether it's sex education or hard-core smut.
The questionable area is a question and answer site called Go Ask Alice that is linked to from the sexuality page inside the section on life.
Susan Addington is a Girl Scout troop leader who got word from scout headquarters about a new addition on the Harris County Public Library Web site called Teens Know. It's supposed to serve as a health education tool. "And I thought before I passed it on to the girls that I should check it out myself," she says. "And I would have been horrified if I had passed it on before I checked it out."
Horrified, she says, because inside the section on life and then sexuality there's a link to the question and answer site Go Ask Alice. "It was just filthy," says Addington. "It was nasty, distasteful. It was things that I've never seen as a 41-year-old adult."
The site talks about various forms of sex including violence, sex with animals and discussions about foreign objects and other explicit material.
Is Library Director Cathy Park comfortable with allowing it on the site? "I think the answers to the questions are very straightforward and very factual," she says.
Park says the mission of her agency is to provide various viewpoints to customers -- not to withhold information.
The county points out it is not alone in its decision to endorse the Web site, but Go Ask Alice is supported by the American Library Association nationwide.
Whether material is suitable or not for children, the county says, "That's information that's really a parent decision."
"I want it gone," says Addington.
She's a parent who believes the county should draw the line on what she calls clearly obscene.
While Library Director Cathy Park stands behind the Web site, she does say that a committee has been formed to study the issue to see if the county should continue to provide the material online.