Presidential hopeful John McCain told a crowd at the Greenville Public Library in South Carolina Jan. 21 that he would eliminate federal funding to schools and libraries that offer unlimited Internet access to children.
McCain visited the library after he was told that its computers were being used by a group of adults, including a convicted sex offender, to gain access to sexually explicit material in the presence of children.
“That this scourge can exist in this beautiful, religiously grounded, family-friendly town points out the enormity of the crisis,” he said. “If you walk into any library and ask for a Hustler magazine the library will tell you it’s not available because it’s inappropriate. Yet a child can log on to the library computer and surf the Web for some of the most degrading and shocking pornography available.”
McCain disagreed with the American Library Association’s assertion that unlimited Internet access was free speech and said that libraries should use Web filtering software to limit access to sexually explicit material.