Schlessinger was riled up about the association's bill of rights, specifically a clause that put the group on record against restricting kids' access to any library materials, including the Web. The library group's stand was already controversial, but Schlessinger went nuclear. She couldn't have sounded more outraged had she stumbled upon a bevy of Schlessinger impersonators flashing the pink for Hustler magazine.

"Here it is," she said. "On the ALA's home page list of recommended teen Web pages, the ALA recommends Go Ask Alice, a site discussing many graphic issues including bestiality, sadomasochism, group sex and other. In my opinion, the ALA has done something evil, which -- as you know from Mother Laura -- is something way past dumb."

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Go Ask Alice is, in fact, a site produced by Columbia University's Health Service to provide "factual, in-depth, straightforward and nonjudgmental information to assist readers' decision-making about their physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual health." Its Q&A format lets people ask questions anonymously; they are answered by university health educators and practitioners. The site has earned favorably attention from media like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Health Letter. And in 1998, Columbia's Health Service won an American Public Health Association award for developing the Internet resource.

Alice is a searchable database, answering questions about body maintenance, colds, aches and pains, nutrition, emotional health, drug and alcohol use, relationships and well, yes, sex. "People write in and they say that they're too embarrassed to ask their parents, their health care provider, their friends, their partners about lots of these concerns," says Jordan Friedman, Columbia's director of Health Education. "We also get a lot of questions -- and these tend to be from younger people -- that say: 'My friend told me this about drugs or sex or depression or a diet and I'm not sure if it's true. Do you have any information that can help me?' They want information and they want it from a source that's reliable. And they want it on their level. Alice does not talk down to people. Alice does not criticize her readers. Alice does not dismiss her readers." Alice, in other words, is no Dr. Laura.

The ALA has supported a link to Go Ask Alice for over a year now, almost as long as it has had a Web site. But the link is not exactly prominent. It's buried nine levels down in a series of subdirectories that act as informational turnstiles. "What we're doing is providing access to information that kids need if they want to take the time to find it," says Joel Shoemaker, the president of the ALA's Young Library Services Association. "Nobody is going to accidentally stumble on to sensitive language without knowing what they're getting into, not from our site."

It's much easier to find the URL for Go Ask Alice on Schlessinger's own Web site, where it appears under "Monologues," as part of a press release from the Minnesota Family Council that was posted on April 23.

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