It seems Congress’ resolve to keep kids from looking at pornography on the Internet is exceeded only by its determination not to trust parents, schools and libraries with the responsibility.

First, there was the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which made it illegal to transmit sexually explicit material online in a way accessible by children. It was declared an infringement of the constitutional guarantee of free speech by the Supreme Court last summer.

Now comes the Internet School Filtering Act of 1998, an multi-flawed attempt to plug up this freely flowing smut on the receiving end by requiring schools and libraries that accept federal telecommunications funds to install porn-blocking filtering software. This takes the proposed solution from the unconstitutional to the unworkable.

Filtering software works by identifying key words relating to sexual activity and blocking the reception of Internet sites containing those words by the host computer. Thus, the key word “sex” would block out the XXX Sextravaganza quite effectively. Of course, it also would block out websites containing information on medical research, genetics, psychology, literature and a host of other legitimate scholarly and scientific subjects. By the time the key words got explicit enough to block only porn, they couldn’t be printed here.

So there’s flaw No. 1. For filters to work, the pornographers must cooperate by including in their sites words only pornographers would use. Since pornographers’ interest in kids is in acquiring parental credit card numbers, such cooperation is unlikely. And after all, Internet porn is all about the graphics. If you want text, get a good unabridged dictionary.

Flaw No. 2 is the false sense of security this law would create. If the kids are being protected by some geeky code-writer out in Palo Alto, why should mom, dad, teacher or librarian sweat it?

They should sweat it. This is about their kids, their school, their library. Many schools have computer usage contracts, signed by student and parents, with the accessing of unsuitable material leading to a loss of computer privileges. Schools and libraries can make users log on, they can check internal files to see who accessed what. Their computers tend to be out in the open, in brightly lit, busy rooms. Fact is, if kids are checking out porn on the Internet, they’re most likely doing it at home. That’s flaw three — aiming at the wrong target.

This well-meaning but misguided bill comes from Arizona Sen. John McCain, generally a senator of uncommonly good sense. An Internet increasingly swamped in porn is a problem; putting schools and libraries in the position of trying to outwit pornographers isn’t the answer. Holding them to blame when they can’t is just plain wrong.

Despite its First Amendment snag, the Communications Decency Act had one thing going for it — it placed the burden of controlling the dissemination of digital pornography upon those who profit from this dirty business. At the very least, the bright minds in Congress ought to be able to come up with the electronic equivalent of the plain brown wrapper many states require of print porn.

The ease with which kids can access Internet porn hits awfully close to home and perhaps home, and the hometown, is where it’s best dealt with. The feds should just butt — oops, filter that — back off from this and let villages raise their own children.