As Democrats – Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) most recently – continue to condemn Republicans, some Democrats (too, too few) and an increasing number of parents as right wing book-banning mouth breathers…
I thought you might be interested in a just-published commentary by Amy Drake, a writer and St. Joseph County (Indiana) councilperson, on what happened when she decided to submit a commentary about this issue to the local newspaper, The South Bend Tribune…
…which included a few passages from one of the books currently in the teen section (14 – 18 years old) of the local library, which the paper vigorously defended in a recent editorial.
Here is how it begins:
I wasn’t surprised when I got a call from the local newspaper telling me it wouldn’t run my editorial featuring graphic sex excerpts from a controversial teen book. The parts I included were definitely disgusting and over-the-top — no question. The South Bend Tribune’s editorial page editor, Alesia I. Redding, told me over the phone, “We’re not going to print these things. … We don’t print those things in a family newspaper.”
Exactly. That’s why moms and dads don’t want “those things” in the family sections of our public library either.
Just days before, Redding and the two others on her editorial board, Executive Editor Ismail Turay Jr. and Enterprise Editor Cory Havens, defended Indiana’s St. Joe County Public Library for refusing to reshelve the sexually explicit teen book in question to the adult section. Their own editorial self-righteously defended political free speech and implied prejudice in the hearts of parents protesting the book, This Book is Gay, noting that the books “most often deemed ‘inappropriate‘ are those that tell the stories of Black and LGBTQ people or are by authors in those communities.” Yet, even the Trib staff acknowledged the inappropriateness of the material when it refused to run such vulgarity in its own pages.
And here is how it ends:
Most rational people know that porn isn’t for kids, and by its policy, the library acknowledged there are limits, too. One of the moms said on a complaint form that This Book is Gay should be removed because: “Children will be more likely to engage in sexual acts with adults, or might be at risk to be victims of sexual abuse by adults.” When asked what the library should do with the book, the mom wrote: “It needs to be far away from kids so that they won’t stumble upon it while browsing in the section for minors.” Sounds reasonable.
But the moms and dads did not realize the unreasonable force they were up against. No doubt a new Indiana law to rid schools of sexually explicit books — and recent controversy at the Hamilton East Public Library in Fishers, Indiana, also involving reshelving such books to the adult section — contributed to the hostile reception they received.
They did not expect to show up at a library board meeting filled to the brim with activists, who had responded to social media calls to flood the event. They did not expect to be labeled Nazis and book banners and be interrupted by insults while taking their time at the microphone to argue for a middle ground. They did not expect to be told not to question the expert librarians, who had “undergone rigorous schooling and preparation to decide the best place to put every title…” (As if a specialized library education somehow justifies keeping obscene material in the children’s section.) They did not expect that the library would end up doing nothing to protect kids.
The newspapers won’t tell the full story. The librarians disguise porn as free speech. The activists twist age-appropriate categories into book banning. The publishers hide the material under pretty rainbow covers that invite little hands to grab it. The librarians tell us not to question their selection decisions because they’re smarter than we are.
The South Bend Tribune editorial got something right in its op-ed when it said that the recent uproar over teen books is “about the minority deciding what books are ‘appropriate’ for the majority.” But the paper identified the minority incorrectly. The minority isn’t concerned parents. The minority is the activists who believe we should have no obscenity limits ever, not even for kids.
If you read the entire piece, you will see the parts that Ms. Drake included in her commentary. Trust me, they are not G rated.
Does she have a point – both about the appropriateness of this material in the teen section of a public library and in her contention that the South Bend Tribune’s editorial writers are a bunch of hypocrites?
You tell me.
