Mr. Neal’s recent opinion piece regarding Huntington Beach’s book restriction policy and the associated legal case cannot go unchallenged. As frequently happens when trying to support a specific perspective, Mr. Neal conveniently only recognizes points that he believes support his point of view, while conveniently ignoring those that don’t.

Let’s start with his first point about the first amendment. The first amendment is about speech and makes no distinction between adults and minors. Access to information is a slightly different category, and no one on either side of the debate ever suggested that minors should have unrestricted access to all library holdings. Strike one.

Next, Mr. Neal asserts that no books were ever banned and children were never prevented from access to any books. L

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