User:Death in a can

Colleen, here is my speech thing. my dad's going ot edit it, so ill update it. WE GOTTA START WERKING ON DA BILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

POSITION PAPER FOR MODEL CONGRESS ---> (MEGAN)

Ever since 1749, books have been banned for inappropriate content and obscenity. They have been pulled in and out of being banned, for the tolerance of such content has changed over the years. Debates have been called to court about books ranging from Ulysses to Little Red Riding Hood. People’s problems with books with “inappropriate” content have been bothering our nation for decades, but almost nothing has been gained out of banning these books.

Although many people are advocates for the censorship and banning of books, others are against it. Some books contained other offences, such as the anti war book Lysistrata 1967 in Greece, which was then controlled by a military junta. Books with explicit language and birth control information have also been banned almost a century ago. Information in books has been denied public display, which is opposes the Freedom of the Press. Everyone should have the opportunity to be able to read anything they want, especially anything that has been printed, and that the denial of those privileges is against America’s Democratic Ideals. Banning books is in a way like controlling what people in our society know, and controlling what they could learn from these books. Some recent examples: On July 1, 1996, Singapore convicted a woman for possessing the Jehovah's Witness translation of the Bible. A 2000 US government report reported that Burma (also known as Myanmar) bans all Bible translations into local indigenous languages. Distributing Bibles, along with other forms of proselytizing by non-Muslims, is also banned in Saudi Arabia, according to a State Department report. A few years ago a sign at a Saudi Arabian airport customs stated that arriving travelers should surrender their non-approved religious books to officials before entering the country. But more recent research tells that the Saudis generally allow western families to bring in their own Bibles, if they do not bring in more copies than expected for personal use.

Since everyone is America has the right of Freedom of the Press, one could say that banning books violates that right directly. Any book that can get past publishers and that has already been distributed through out the nation should not be in anyway be banned, for that is denying that book from being read, and thus violating the author’s rights.

Although the society believes that there is some sense in banning obscene books, but ridding the entire American Population of these books isn’t a rational answer to the problem. This bill will solve the problems of censorship, for it will make the banning rules for books less strict and severe is a more reasonable solution, for not only would the general public be able to access the book, the author’s rights of Freedom of the Press would not be denied. Only if the book contained illegal material such as the production and distribution of drugs and explosives or books that included hate crimes would it be completely banned. f the books contain sexual content such as prostitution and other sexual references, or books are labeled as unsuitable for minors, parental consent of reading or purchasing these books could be a solution. If the person wishing to read or purchase the book is over the age of 18, the legal age of being considered an adult, no issues should occur in the reading or purchasing of the book. If some books are considered to be extremely offensive in any way, complaints to banning the said book could still be taken into action. Since this bill would only lessen the severity of book banning regulations, such as books that contained information on the production and distribution of drugs and dangerous explosives. In the 1999-2000 session, the US Congress quietly slipped similar bans for "dangerous" information on drugs and explosives into various bills. The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 (S. 1428) had a section 9 outlawing certain dissemination of information on drug use, patterned after a law outlawing certain dissemination on information on explosives that was signed in 1999. Given that conspiracy or solicitation to commit federal crimes was already illegal, it's hard to see what practical effect is intended by these bills other than to censor the open dissemination of information deemed too dangerous for the public to learn. The anti-drug-information bill has not yet made it to a full vote in Congress, as far as I'm aware, so books such as E For Ecstasy (which was banned in Australia) is still legal in the US, for now. Hate crime is also an issue in public literature. A number of democratic countries, including Austria, France, Germany, and Canada, have criminalized various forms of "hate speech", including books judged to disparage minority groups. In the 1980s, Ernst Zündel was convicted twice under Canada's "false news" laws for publishing Did Six Million Really Die?, a 1974 book denying the Holocaust. On appeal, the Canadian Supreme Court found the "false news" law unconstitutional in 1992, but Zündel is now being prosecuted under Canada's "Human Rights Act" for publishing this book and other material on his Zundelsite. Even so, Deborah Lipstadt and some other prominent critics of Holocaust deniers have gone on record as opposing laws that would censor such speech. Yet another example of banning obscene books is John Cleland's Fanny Hill (also known as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) has been frequently suppressed since its initial publication in 1749. This story of a prostitute is known both for its frank sexual descriptions which would be extremely inappropriate for minors, and its parodies of contemporary literature, such as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. The U.S Supreme Court finally cleared it from obscenity charges in 1966. Many debates have shown that there are both cons and pros to the banning of certain books, but our bill will reduce the severity of the restrictions on what the public is allowed to read. Only books that contain extreme amounts of illegal drug and explosive production and hate speech will be tried for banning, and books that contain great amount of sexual content will require minors to get parental consult. This bill will help limit and reduce the amount of books that are banned in America, and will help to continue to protect the citizens of America, along with the Freedom of the Press.