I called the Denver Public Library on Thursday to find out when I get to hang my banner on library headquarters.
You can’t, city librarian Rick Ashton informed me.
“The library building, in general, is not available as a billboard,” he said.
I figured all Denver taxpayers are now entitled to express their views on the library’s seven-story downtown structure.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s the precedent members of the city’s library commission set when they voted to post a message above the library’s front door. The message, on a white plastic banner, said, “Privacy Line – Do Not Cross – Stop Secret Searches – ACLU – ReformthePatriotAct.org.”
The American Civil Liberties Union provided the banner. It protested the federal Patriot Act, which makes librarians turn over to government agents information about patrons without probable cause that they’ve committed a crime.
My sign would simply read, “Amen.”
I don’t want anyone examining my library borrowing habits. Last fall, as a battle raged over whether Denver’s libraries spent too much buying movies of questionable artistic merit, your intrepid columnist made his own study of the library’s erotic-film collection. The FBI probably won’t believe that I watched a movie called “Trois” strictly for professional reasons. I know my wife won’t.
Anyway, I truly hope Congress curbs the Patriot Act and keeps my reading and viewing history confidential.
The problem is, in hanging the ACLU’s sign, the library commission has opened a Pandora’s box. And I don’t mean the R-rated video currently available at the Bear Valley Ranch branch.
What the library commission did in hanging the ACLU’s banner was let a private group use its building as a billboard.
Fair’s fair. I want my banner hung.
More than that, I think any person who pays taxes that finance the Denver Public Library now has the same right.
If it’s OK to string an ACLU sign attacking the Patriot Act on the library, it ought to be OK to string a sign that says something like, “Close the book on terror. Support the Patriot Act.”
“That’s unfortunately the door (the library commission) opened,” said Denver City Council President Rosemary Rodriguez. “A resolution might have been enough.”
Rodriguez calls herself “a free-speech absolutist.” But she also admits that she wishes the library commission hadn’t hung the banner because of the precedent it set.
“If you do this for one cause,” asked Councilman Doug Linkhart, “are you going to do it for every cause?”
Linkhart cited a section of the city code that says commissions can’t use public facilities in legislative campaigns unless those facilities “are similarly available to the public.”
Even the ACLU’s legal director, Mark Silverstein, acknowledged complications.
“If the library has given permission to a private speaker to express a viewpoint, it can’t discriminate with another private speaker” on the same subject, he said.
Silverstein also conceded that “the ACLU logo on the banner makes the ACLU look like the speaker.”
That means a good legal argument can be made for my “Amen” banner or a “Close the book on terror” banner by a group that supports the Patriot Act.
Especially as librarian Ashton takes the position that another organization’s banner represents the library commission’s position.
Ashton doesn’t think my status as a taxpayer who helps pay his six-figure salary matters in my request to hang a banner.
“You don’t have any official capacity,” he told me. “The library commission is charged by city charter with governing the library. Adoption of a policy position on any public legislation is allowed. That’s official business. It’s not private expression.”
Not even, he insists, when a private group provides the expression.
This just doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like a perfect case for …
Well, it seems like a perfect case for the ACLU.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
