administrators: for all of your efforts, thank you. i post this message because of other threads (in other fora) in recent days that argue the intent and meaning of the TOS in terms of "appropriateness" and as "food for thought" for anyone reading this message. from the u.s. supreme court and justice douglas in 1966 upon the reversal of the finding by the massachusetts supreme court that "fanny hill" (1749) was obscene and to be banned from that state's libraries. (the "censor" is NOT the administration of this on-line community in my thinking.) "... The (u.s.)Constitution forbids abridgment of 'freedom of speech, or of the press.' Censorship is the most notorious form of abridgment. It substitutes majority rule where minority tastes or viewpoints were to be tolerated.... Every time an obscenity case is to be argued here, my office is flooded with letters and postal cards urging me [383 U.S. 413, 428] to protect the community or the Nation by striking down the publication... The drives are incessant and the pressures are great. Happily we do not bow to them. I mention them only to emphasize the lack of popular understanding of our constitutional system. Publications and utterances were made immune from majoritarian control by the First Amendment, applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth. No exceptions were made, not even for obscenity. The Court's contrary conclusion in Roth, where obscenity was found to be "outside" the First Amendment, is without justification.... ... The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.... (here, cases are cited) Perhaps the most frequently assigned justification for censorship is the belief that erotica produce antisocial sexual conduct. But that relationship has yet to be proven.... Indeed, if one were to make judgments on the [383 U.S. 413, 432] basis of speculation, one might guess that literature of the most pornographic sort would, in many cases, provide a substitute - not a stimulus - for antisocial sexual conduct. See Murphy, The Value of Pornography, 10 Wayne L. Rev. 655, 661 and n. 19 (1964). As I read the First Amendment, judges cannot gear the literary diet of an entire nation to whatever tepid stuff is incapable of triggering the most demented mind. The First Amendment demands more than a horrible example or two of the perpetrator of a crime of sexual violence, in whose pocket is found a pornographic book, before it allows the Nation to be saddled with a regime of censorship. 11 [383 U.S. 413, 433]...." i have found the u.s. supreme court to be most eloquent on issues such as the ones being discussed in this thread and others. this is an american website; it follows american custom and practice. i thought it'd be helpful to cite the eloquent comments from this institution - whether this case specifically deals with literature or not - as assistance in working through the real-world issues that are being debated here. thank you.