STUDENT: Not parents’ right to censor other parents’ children

If anyone needs a quick reminder of our First Amendment right, please look and read the top of the Opinion page. Don’t books fall under the banner of free speech? It’s the opinions and the messages of the authors, just like the Opinion page is full of your opinions. If someone doesn’t agree with you, do you deserve to be censored? No. Your opinions fall under the First Amendment right. Though, people do have the right to not read what you’ve written.

Shouldn’t that extend to our libraries as well?

When I visited the library, I would always check out stacks and stacks of books. My mom knew the title of each one I read. If she didn’t like a book I picked out, or wasn’t comfortable with what I was reading, I wasn’t allowed to read it. And that is what parents do, protect their kids. As parents, it is your right to censor and protect your children. However, it is not your right to censor other parents’ children. What you allow your child to read can be different than what another family may allow.

The library is a public institution. It is a non-political institution. This means that it has books from all ends of the political spectrum. The library is also not religious. It has books on atheism and it has The Bible. Banning books quickly turns political, just look back to Germany in 1933. Do we really want to start down that slippery slope of censorship?

Thank you for reading it.

EMMA KEITH, junior at Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy

Hayden