One of the great services that Joe performs for the citizens of Greensboro is to field questionnaires for city council candidates and to post the responses. I may disagree with Joe's slant on a lot of things, including some of the loaded questions on the questionnaire, but I have to salute him for giving voters a wealth of candidate information that wouldn't come out otherwise.
Why bring up the questionnaire? Well, in today's post, Joe expresses disappointment with a city council candidate who flip-flopped on a question about filtering (she responded that she supported computer filtering on the questionnaire and then didn't support Danny Thompson's ill-conceived motions regarding filtering).
It appears, however, that filtering wasn't exactly the be-all and end-all issue when Joe was making endorsemens. For example, in the District 2 race last year, he endorsed Dan Fischer whose response to the filtering question was “No. I want our children to be able to look for what they need to for research purposes. And there are plenty of people who use the library computers other than our children. If we had a section just for children then yes, I would want some kind of filters on the computers.”
He favored Fischer over Nettie Coads, whose response to the filtering question was "Yes, some should be filtered for exclusive use by young people."
In another race, Joe endorsed George Hartzman, whose very adamant response to the filtering question was, "First Amendment. It is up to parents to raise their children, not the state. Next thing you know somebody is burning books. Who gets to decide what’s filtered?" In that race, Joe passed over a candidate who gave a more positive response.
In another race, he initially endorsed Nancy Vaughan, whose response to the filtering question was "(No) I do not think that the libraries’ should filter computer content. Parents should take responsibility for their children’s computer use. " There were other candidates in the race unambiguously supported filtering.
In another race, Joe endorsed Mary Rakestraw, who did not complete a questionnaire, over Joel Landau whose short but sweet answer to the filtering question was "yes."
Joe continues to cast people who oppose filtering as "amoral" and castigates them as "relativists."
These parties have collectively decided that the false god of "library information" accessed through the internet is at a higher level of priority than the moral imperative of protecting minors. They have constructed an idol in their minds-- and that idol is unobstructed access to the internet.But in several instances Joe's actions show that he had higher priorities than "the moral imperative of protecting minors." Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see a single case where Joe even mentioned filtering in his endorsement posts.
Joe had an opportunity to make moral choices related to filtering--it was either an all-important issue with him or it wasn't. Joe chose to elevate other concerns.
