FC: Anti-porn crusader upset she can't see smut in librar
Rohit Khare (khare@w3.org)
Tue, 9 Sep 1997 12:01:59 -0400 (EDT)
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Opposed to Cyberporn, Official Angry She's Not Exempt from Library Ban
BY KIM NORTH, DETROIT FREE PRESS
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 18--City Council members aren't supposed to break the rules.
Especially their own.
But that's what Warren City Councilwoman Gloria Sankuer tried to do last
week when she went to a Warren public library and demanded to be shown how
to find ``naked pictures'' on the Internet.
But the librarian couldn't show her, because a local ordinance pushed by
Sankuer herself forbade it.
The librarian at the Dorothy Busch branch on Ryan wasn't moved when Sankuer
flashed her City Council badge.
``My need was urgent. I needed pictures of this disgusting, appalling
porno on the Internet,'' Sankuer said Thursday.
Angered, the councilwoman, who said she needed the pictures for official
business, raised her voice at the woman.
The city employees' union filed a grievance against Sankuer on Wednesday
asking for an apology. The grievance also asks the city to ensure Sankuer
never creates such a row again.
Library director Spike Musselman did not name the librarian.
The Warren ordinance orders libraries to keep computer screens free of
flesh.
``This is her policy and she wanted us to ignore it,'' Musselman said
Thursday.
Sankuer admits berating the woman. But the librarian should have known to
make an exception for a councilwoman, Sankuer said. She said she needed
pornographic pictures to take to a Macomb County Commission meeting about
pornography on the Internet.
The councilwoman declined to say if she would apologize.
``I'm protecting the young and the innocent from the tax-funded porn,'' she
said. ``This is a distraction.''