Censorship in Blogs

I ended up at this blog today when I was looking for something by Manly Wade Wellman. The link is to a thread about suggested reading material for a fourteen year old girl. Eventually I figured out that the author and commentators are Catholic and are pretty serious about not giving this girl anything to read which isn't supportive of Catholicism and its ideals. Readers warn against books which condone contraceptive and they all seem to despise Heinlein.

Some of the comments are extremely funny, some are just plain baffling (how do you not love Jane Yolen's Briar Rose?) and then at the end they are obscene and hateful. Someone has posted some descriptions of things he'd like to do to the daughter of the blog owner.

I am quite surprised that the comments haven't been removed. They are an attack, using sex and shock as the weapon and the target is under age.

The whole purpose of the thread is to create a reading list for the daughter. If I were her I'd be checking back every so often to make a new list of books to check out of the library. She really doesn't need to read comments like that. It's doubly odd to me that other people just kept on commenting as though the comments were appropriate.