QUINCY, Mass.—An enlightened city official from Quincy has offered a time-honored method to discourage adult patrons from accessing pornography at public libraries. He wants to make public a list of offenders.
Ward 2 Councilor Daniel Raymondi said that his main concern is whether any of the patrons violating library policy by accessing online porn are sex offenders. City officials passed an ordinance in December banning all Level 3 sex offenders from public libraries and parks.
“We’re just trying to get ahead of it,” said the councilor. “I can’t imagine your average taxpayer thinking it’s okay to satisfy the appetites of some of these folks by using public dollars.”
It is unclear whether the idea that non-sex offenders might also want to access porn has occurred to Raymondi, who sent a resolution to the mayor requesting “a list of the individuals who violated the library’s policy against viewing pornographic material within the past year.”
The city’s legal team will need to assess the request before complying with it, but libraries in the city already have a three-strike rule for patrons caught snooping at dirty pictures.
At least Raymondi is not proposing that offenders be tarred and feathered or kept in stocks, as he might have done in the 1700s—or worse, burned at the stake. It’s 2010, after all, and this is Massachusetts we’re talking about, not Texas.
