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The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake.

The National Coalition Against Censorship has entered the fray surrounding the Annville-Cleona School Board's banning of the award-winning children's book "The Dirty Cowboy."

The NCAC on Tuesday sent a letter to the members of the board, expressing the coalition's concern over the decision to remove the book and urging the board to return the book to the district's libraries.

View the letter here.

The school board will meet at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

The letter was signed by NCAC executive director Joan Bertin and Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

The letter notes that the objection upon which the ban was based was to "nudity" in the book, although sensitive areas of the body are not depicted. Regardless, the letter points out, simple nudity is fully protected by the First Amendment.

"There is no salacious or sexually suggestive content in the book - it is merely an amusing story of a cowboy taking his annual bath, getting even dirtier in the process," the letter states. "As the Supreme Court has observed on numerous occasions, " 'nudity alone' does not place otherwise protected material outside the mantle of the First Amendment."

The letter also states that school officials are bound by constitutional considerations, including a duty not to give in to pressure to suppress language or images deemed controversial or offensive by some.

According to the letter, the Supreme Court has cautioned that school officials "may not remove books from library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'"

Read more from the original source:
Anti-censorship group weighs in on 'The Dirty Cowboy' ban

Two anti-censorship groups want Sumner County schools to lift a ban on the teen novel Looking for Alaska.

The National Coalition against Censorship and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression sent Sumner Director of Schools Del Phillips a letter Monday.

It urges the district to honor its constitutional obligation and allow the White House High School English class to finish reading the student-selected novel.

It is particularly disturbing that the complaint of one parent triggered a county-wide ban within the span of a single week, without following established procedure and without so much as a review of the literary and educational merits of the book, the letter states. The district has imposed one viewpoint on the entire student body, without regard to the educational consequences for students.

The groups claim Sumner County violated its own district policy, which says if a parent complains, that student can be given an alternative book to read.

Sumner County school officials said last week a parent complained to the district, which led officials to review a two-page oral sex scene in the book and pull the book from assigned reading districtwide.

The book is still available in school libraries for individual students to check out, said district spokesman Jeremy Johnson.

Our policy was broken to start with. The teacher didnt run it through that process, he said. We do not see a reason to revisit the issue and think its been properly addressed.

Under the districts controversial materials policy, he said, teachers are required to submit all titles of required reading for parents to review, but the White House teacher didnt.

Read the original here:
Anti-censorship groups want Sumner schools to lift book ban

15 May 2012 Last updated at 14:45

Pornography filters on mobile phones are "censoring" normal web content, according to the Open Rights Group.

Its report found that 60 websites were incorrectly blocked by mobile filters designed to prevent children viewing adult content.

The affected sites included political commentaries, personal blogs and community websites.

The government is considering whether to apply similar blocks to fixed-line broadband services.

Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group, author of the report, said the study proved such tools were ineffective.

"Child protection filters can actually affect many more users than intended and block many more sites than they should. These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks," he said.

In a response published on the ORG website, Hamish MacLeod, chairman of the Mobile Broadband Group, denied this.

"Even allowing for the ORG missing a few, 60 misclassified websites does not amount to anything that could reasonably be described as 'censorship', particularly when mobile operators are happy to remove the filters when customers show they are over 18 and will re-classify websites when misclassifications are pointed out to them," he said.

"This is how the small handful of websites that get referred to mobile operators each year are already dealt with," he added.

The rest is here:
Mobile porn filters 'censorship'

A three-decades-old partnership between the city's black ministers and the Houston Police Department has ended after pastors refused to agree to new guidelines issued by Chief Charles McClelland that prohibits them from criticizing the police or city administration.

The ACLU and longtime civil rights activists blasted the prohibition against criticism by clergy who volunteer with the department.

McClelland changed the organization of HPD's religious volunteers by forming a group called the Police and Clergy Alliance (PACA). He issued guidelines governing the new alliance that took effect April 26.

Last week, an estimated 100 to 150 black ministers who are members of the Houston Ministers Against Crime turned in their HPD-issued credentials, saying they would no longer work with police, the pastor's group director confirmed.

The ministers against crime organization was founded in 1976, and Houston leaders have since heralded the group's accomplishments at improving relations between police and minorities at national mayor's conferences and other forums.

"It's hurting that in 2012 preachers cannot say in the United States what they want to say about what's going on that's not righteous," said the Rev. Robert Jefferson. "If anybody stands for righteousness, it ought to be a preacher. But if you got to obey a piece of paper saying you can't associate with people who are against the police department, you can't say nothing against the mayor or say nothing against the police chief, I quit because I'm going to be free to say what God tells me to do."

No individual limits

In a statement, McClelland said the prohibition against criticizing HPD is in force only while the clergy members are wearing an HPD-issued badge. The badge is essentially a photo identification card with the city's seal and motto and under the words "Houston Police Department."

McClelland said the police department has had multiple ministerial groups with various missions and whose activities were difficult to coordinate.

"With the formation of PACA this is a good way that we refocus, make sure we're all on the same page and committed to the same goals," McClelland said. "It is unfortunate some ministers feel they are being silenced by myself or HPD. As I have stated from the outset, they are free to do or say whatever they want as individuals. Any guidelines apply only when they are speaking in their official capacity as representatives of the alliance with an HPD badge."

More:
Pastors end partnership with HPD, accusing chief of censorship

The cheesy sex novel has long been a staple of literature, and its always a problem when staples are taken away.

But public libraries in several states are pulling the racy romance trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey from shelves or deciding not to order the best-seller at all, saying its too steamy or too poorly written.

Like there are no poorly written books in libraries.

When a book is removed from the shelf, folks who cant afford a Nook or a Kindle, the book is no longer available to them, said Deborah Caldwell Stone, of the American Library Associations office for intellectual freedom.

Fifty Shades of Grey, this generations 9?1/2 Weeks, has been called mommy porn because of its popularity among middle-age women.

This week, the trilogy holds the top three spots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Libraries in Wisconsin, Georgia and, of course, crazy Florida, all have had issues with the book.

Its semi-pornographic, said Don Walker, a spokesman for Brevard County, Fla., where the library put 19 copies of the book on the shelves and then pulled them after reading reviews. About 200 notices had to go out to people on the books waiting list.

It doesnt suit our community standards, said Cay Hohmeister, director of libraries for Leon County, home of Floridas capital.

Even though hundreds of people in the community want to read it.

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‘50 Shades’ of censorship