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        Parents should not be able to have the right to be the sole educators of their children on controversial issues. The sad fact in the world today is that ignorance breeds. When a parent knows little about topics such as drugs or sex, they tend to treat it as taboo, and don't want their poor baby exposed to such icky things. But if this is the case, the child will not only grow up knowing nothing from their parents, they will be denied their only other way of learning about it short of first hand experience, which in many cases could be very dangerous. Reality is out there, no matter how much somebody tries to shield their child from it.  

          To a further extent, this applies to prejudices such as racism and homophobia. It's bad enough the parent is teaching the child to have this hatefull belief, but if they can they restrict them from learning the other side's point of view, there is no hope of a next generation with tolerance. Have we as a country fought through more than fifty years of civil rights movements just to return to the days of the Jim Crow Laws?

         Although parental censorship can be damaging, it should not be totally restricted, or at least not untill the child in question reaches a certan age. Extremes such as allowing six year olds to view pornography may be going too far, but to take the book Heather Has Two Mommies out of a library and throw it out because you don't agree with homosexuality is also . Finding a middle ground in which ingorance is not continued, but young kids aren't watching Saw III is the key.