While the idea that all people should be free to read whatever material they want to read is an idea that most of us can agree upon, it is not an idea that is as easily lived up to.
I have been in the business of selling books for over 30 years and I fervently support every individual's right to read, and yet I still come upon material that I wish were not afforded the paper it is written on or the computer bytes used to send it out into the world. It is at those moments when I can feel like some of our customers feel, who say to me with all sincerity, " I do not believe in censorship, but this book is .... (horrible/evil/sexist/violent/too graphic . . . you fill in the word) AND you should not be selling it!" At that moment for them, for deeply felt personal reasons and beliefs, the ideal of "freedom to read" is set aside. An exception must be made!
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Here is where we each must step up and afford every person the right to read something that we personally may find to be vile and worthless, something that we would never choose to read, and something that we might even wish were never published.
Here is where we step up and say that it should and it must be up to each individual to make that decision for him or her self. And that, in order to make that decision, we must support a society that allows a wide diversity of information to be available to its members, an open spectrum of ideas to be discussed, to be written about, to be understood. Once we decide that it's okay to make the decision about what should and should not be available to be read we must understand that others will make those decisions, as well. Others will decide what's good enough for you to read. Others will decide what thoughts are acceptable for you to hear and what thoughts are not.
Sometimes it's not easy to live in a world that believes in this kind of freedom. I can't imagine how hard it would be to live in a world that does not.
--Linda
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