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Show Letters Lo The Irrational Bookburners Editor, Utah Daily Chronicle: Wednesday night the Salt Lake City Youth Protection Council sponsored a public lecture lec-ture at Highland High auditorium audito-rium on censorship, given by Mr. Keating of Cincinnati, Ohio. After repeatedly stating that his lecture was going to be rational ra-tional rather than emotional, Mr. Keating failed to stats the problem, develop it, or reach any sort of rational conclusion, but relied solely on quotations from some of the worst con- temporary literature. He made no mention of the overall ethical problem of censorship, cen-sorship, but assumed that it was a vital institution for the protection pro-tection of our youth from all sorts of perversion and sexual deviation, which, he said, would certainly arise from the reading of pornography. A conclusion not documented by any such incidents. In response to a question, Mr. Keating could seem to find no argument in favor of controlling control-ling the publishers of the objectionable objec-tionable material and was equally reticent about leaving the job' of censorship up to the individual or the family, where it rightly belongs. He seemed to favor some vague form of public censorship, censor-ship, which must of necessity impinge on our freedoms of speech and the press. We would also take issue with the make-up of the Youth Protection Council. Although this group of critics is made up of policemen, law-years, law-years, Boy Scout leaders, and church officials, we heard no mention of any psychologists, sociologists, professors of literature, liter-ature, or indeed, of anyone professionally pro-fessionally interested in a definition defi-nition of pornography or its social so-cial consequences. We feel, therefore, that this body lacks the background for censorship of any sort. RUSSELL CRESSMAN a JOHN WILLIAMS li |