Unfiltered internet use by minors in public and school libraries and classrooms might pose a larger threat of harm than books under the library records confidentiality section of S.220
by Renee McGuinness
Parents’ access to their child’s library use was already limited despite the lowered age because: 1) Library use records are only available while a book is currently checked out; 2) Past records are not available unless a book is past due or there is an unpaid late fee; 3) Minors can read books in libraries without formally checking them out.
S.220 passed out of the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs 8-3-1 on May 1, with Republican Representatives Higley, Hango, and Morgan voting “no” because of the lowered age. It will now go to the full House for a vote.
Lack of internet filter protections for curious, tech-savvy youth leaves minors at risk of harm caused by accidental or intentional access to obscene or inappropriate materials and on-line predators. The National Institute of Health reports that, “Adolescent pornography use has continuously increased over time and the age of first exposure to sexually explicit materials has also been getting younger,” and that 68.4% reported exposure to online pornography in the USA.
Just as parents can install apps to block, monitor, and limit their child’s cell-phone use to protect them while preserving their privacy, providing internet filters on public computers would also protect our children.
Vermont Family Alliance (VFA) requested during testimony that the Committee amend S.220 to include mandatory compliance with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) | Federal Communications Commission (fcc.gov) in all public libraries and schools, which offers the financial incentive of greatly reduced internet services costs for schools and libraries that comply with CIPA internet filtering software requirements. The Vermont Agency of Education has information on e-rates and a link to an application, and Central Vermont Supervisory Union already complies with CIPA. The Committee did not consider VFA’s request.
Catherine Delneo, State Librarian and Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries, confidently shared during her testimony of her adolescent daughter’s proclamation that she will always talk about the books she is reading with her parents and asserted that lowering the age to 12+ doesn’t affect most families, only those families in which adolescents are “at risk,” “have a specific health or safety need,” or “whose intellectual interests may fall outside their parents’ interests.”
Delneo implemented Vermont’s new e-book system, Palace, an app that provides access to audiobooks and eBooks from multiple vendors. The Palace Project proclaims, “libraries are the Palaces for the People,” and offers a Banned Book Club.
Representative Michael Mrowicki, who declined to accept a written copy of VFA’s testimony, stated that public libraries are sacred institutions. VFA told the Committee that families are sacred institutions that no individual, organization, or government entity has a right to undermine, and that there is a system of due process under the Vermont Department of Children and families in suspected cases of neglect and abuse.
The legislature’s focus on lowering the age at which minors can make adult decisions regarding mental health care, sexual activity, sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatments, and controlling the solutions when a minor is questioning or struggling with gender identity and sexual attraction, without pro-actively including parents in these important decision-making processes, despite the age of majority is 18 under 1 V.S.A. § 173, is disastrous for children and families.
Further, the Vermont Agency of Education claims, under misinterpretation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that schools must keep gender identity private from students’ parents.
According to comments by some of the representatives on the committee, the justification for lowering the age to 12 is based upon the belief that if children are afraid to talk with their parents about certain topics, there is already a breakdown in the parent-child relationship, or the parent is unaccepting. VFA finds this to be judgmental and assuming of parents, who know and love their own children more than any other adult in their lives and know their individual children’s readiness for sensitive topics – a readiness that can vary among siblings.
S.220 will do a “drive-by” through the House Committee on Education before going to the House floor for a final vote.
Categories: Commentary, Education, Legislation
My letter to the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs:
Rep. McCarthy,
Vermont Family Alliance has alerted me to this bill, S.220, that lowers the age of parental transparency from 16 to 12, shaving some four years off of parental oversight of their child’s development.
What is it that both Plato’s Republic and Marx’s Communist Manifesto have in common? They both envision and call for a Utopian society where the state or community take responsibility for the children of said community.
S.220 takes us closer to this supposed Utopian realization, when in fact we need to go in the very opposite direction-that is-greater parental responsibility and control.
Statistics clearly show that out-of-wedlock births and single parent homes have a vast disproportion of societal maladies, from poverty to disruptive behavior to obesity, etc.
We should be supportive of laws promoting intact, two parent families, and when that isn’t the case we should be supporting laws promoting greater parental involvement in their child’s development.
Cognitive development doesn’t fully develop in young people until their early to mid twenties. Why in the world would the state allow ever younger youth to entertain ideas and thoughts unsupervised from those most loved by them?
With the state of Vermont now feeding our children, directing them in sexual and race ideologies outside of the traditional modes of education of math and science and reading, etc., and now wanting to further disconnect children from parents, it’s evermore clear to me that the state of Vermont shares the visions of Plato’s Republic and Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
This direction will not end well.
When all are responsible for a child’s care, no one is responsible for that child’s care.
Both God and nature provide a covenantal bond between parent and child. This bond needs to be strengthened, not weakened.
Please refrain from enacting the kind of egregious Utopian policies that modernity has already unleashed on our children and their parents.
Respectfully,
Tom Licata
Burlington
Revelation 17:5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.
A great number of people followed Him, including women who kept mourning and wailing for Him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!”… Luke 23: 27-30
I’m not what one might characterize as an overtly religious person. None the less, the prescience of this verse doesn’t escape me.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the enemy knows Biblical scripture better than those who proclaim to follow it and believe in it – hence, they adapted well over millenia to weaponize it and create religions of all sorts to influence, weild power and control. In my opinion, there is no need for moderators or gate keepers to connect to our Creator or connect to universal Truths….that’s what they don’t want anyone to know or discover.
Don’t worry – Mrowicki will protect the youth with a library mask mandate.
“Get’em while they’re young”…The Democrat creed with all it’s connotations.
So, this is again whereby if you don’t possess the Marxist decoder glasses and ring, you’ll often get swayed by their fair speech, thinking they actually care about your freedoms and wellbeing, which could not be further from the truth.
All forms of the internet and entertainment are taxed, EXCEPT PORN.
Go the movies, you’ll see a tax.
Go to the tv, your bill will have tax.
Cell phone, you have a tax.
Netflix, a tax.
HBO a tax.
Buy a book, you get taxed.
Buy a newspaper, there’s tax in there somewhere.
In the subversion of a country, as demonstrated by many who do this, those wishing to tear down a country from within take over and corrupt many good institutions, by plan, on purpose.
* Education a primary target, demonstrably so even to the blind, in today’s top Colleges and Universities.
* Religion, morality, again demonstrably evident in todays’ churches.
* Family structure, this was done on purpose to our brothers and sisters of a darker hue in the 1960”s whereby in an “effort” to liberate them they tore down the basic family structure and had the government replace the father, by design on purpose. Very effective.
This is also being propagated across the country in the division and fighting of the sexes, whereby we have both sides saying “I don’t need men, I don’t need women”, all by design of destruction, rather than love and truth. Along with this is the place an role of sexual relations.
The young men and women of this age are exposed and told more lies and filth than perhaps all generation prior combined. It is an assault on the order of nature, science and religion, distorting the truth to epic proportions. To wit, young men are becoming impotent in their 20’s due to porn. Woman are becoming prostitutes online, for the fast easy cash.
This is part of the design and their intent, to confuse the populace about their sexuality, when I heard this, my first reaction was what a dumb idea, how could somebody be confused about their sexuality? But the truth is, this is very close to genius and evil on an order of magnitude higher than most anything else. Sex is a drug in some respects, and used indiscriminately is very addictive and destructive, nations have fallen, great men have been crushed by sex, along with women.
THIS IS WHY THEY WON’T TAX PORN
THEY WANT PORN TO DESTRO OUR SOCIETIES
IT WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT THAT WHEN THE PANDEMIC HAPPENED ALL OF A SUDDEN, ALL THE PORN STARTED TO BE INTERFAMILIAL
PORN SHOULD BE TAXED LIKE ALL OTHER ENTERTAINMENT
ITS BASE, IT SHOULD BE TAXED HEAVILY
Here is the plan, laid out by this gentleman 30+ years ago.
How much of this fits in today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g
This is like a basic overview from a professor. Really good instructor!
And there is a cure for all this nonsense, it is perhaps one of the best overviews of subversion that I’ve seen. We only need to change our direction, it can be easily done, fear not, fear not.
TGBTG
You cannot subvert a society that does not want to be subverted….