Freedom of Speech

I'm a member of the CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund), which is a protector of first amendment rights (mainly, but not exclusively of comic books), so I hear things all the time, far more often than the usual media sources report it, about book bannings.
I have some personal history with this subject. The last school I went to in Tennessee before that final move to Minnesota was embroiled in a fierce debate regarding the inclusion of two short stories which were that most evil of stories, science fiction. The decision had been made when the books were bought to not assign those two stories, but of course that was not good enough. After all, we would all be carrying these books around for the entire year; we could read them any time we wanted to (and I read both of them the first night I took that book home cause I'm just that kind of girl).
They weren't particularly good scifi. They were in fact quite wishy-washy and I didn't like either of them. That's not particularly meaningful, I don't remember liking anything I was assigned to read in school until I started taking honors classes in the 8th grade. One involved an alien living among people who could not tell a lie, not even a white one, and the other involved telepathic aliens called the "beautiful ones" who also were completely benign. At any rate, the debate about those books was still ongoing when I moved (as was the debate on prayer in schools: today we prayed, yesterday we didn't, tomorrow might be a moment of silence. Northern schools were always a shock as it NEVER CAME UP).
But I digress. So someone in Florida (gasp!) wants a book removed from the school library because she didn't like it and no one else should read it. I don't get that reaction at all. The book is aimed towards tweens and involves a passing reference to alcohol and pornography (key word reference; this book is not about those things. It's about a girl growing up, as these books usually are).
I don't get the "I don't like that... burn it!" response. So let's talk about a book I absolutely hated. American Psycho. First of all, it was recommended to me by a guy I knew in college who was convinced it was just my sort of thing. Also, I was to read it while listening to Nine Inch Nails. So I went out and picked up AP and Pretty Hate Machine. Unfortunately I can't actually listen to music and read together (although I can do just about anything else to music), so I had to undertake those things sequentially rather than concurrently.
My first reaction to that book was, "My God, how do I come off to people?" This is the perfect book for me? Reading that book... metaphors fail me. It was a horrid experience reading that book, but I felt compelled to finish it, hoping for an ending that would feel like closure to me. That didn't happen.
But my response was not "burn it". I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone else to read that book. But that book which I hated is one of those my mind goes back to a lot. Why did I hate that book? Why did it make me so uncomfortable?
Here's the interesting part. When I finally laid that book to rest in my mind, I had decided it belonged with things like the movie Natural Born Killers. I understand that it is satire, but it's irresponsible satire. And with that conclusion, you would think, "no one else should read this" would follow but strangely it doesn't. As bad as it was, I gained something from six years of internal debate about why I thought it was bad.
As a parent, and further as a homeschooling parent (whose decision to homeschool was largely made based on events like those I described above, and was really made solid when schools started banning Harry Potter), I appreciate a book that starts a discussion. And a discussion we come back to again and again for years is better than one that we can sum up in ten minutes. Aidan doesn't read much on his own yet, so most of our discussions come from things he sees in movies and TV. I don't want him only to be exposed to ideas I agree with; I want the opportunities to discuss what I don't agree with and why.
At any rate, I do like the Nine Inch Nails. So that guy from college got it half right.