The book crisis actors say the library provides pornography, obscene and sexually explicit materials to children. Is this true?
To anyone who has ever visited the library, the obvious answer is no. Library staff hold advanced degrees and are professionally trained to select age-appropriate materials for purchase and display. You will not find copies of Playboy magazine anywhere in the library, let alone in the children’s section.
What is Obscenity?
In their crusade to ban LGBTQ books at the library, the book crisis actors seem to have forgotten they are using actual legal terms with legal definitions. The U.S. Supreme Court has established a test that judges and juries use to determine whether matter is obscene. The three-pronged Miller Test requires that courts consider:
- Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests (i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion);
- Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, finds that the matter depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way (i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse); and
- Whether a reasonable person finds that the matter, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
–Citizen’s Guide to US Federal Law on Obscenity, US Department of Justice
Section 1466A of Title 18, United State Code specifically concerns minors and outlines an alternative 2-pronged test with a lower threshold. The matter involving minors can be deemed obscene if it
- depicts an image that is, or appears to be a minor engaged in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse and
- if the image lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Federal law prohibits both the production of obscene matter with intent to sell or distribute, and engaging in a business of selling or transferring obscene matter. The mainstream publishing industry does not produce obscene materials, let alone obscene materials depicting minors. It would be impossible for the library to even purchase such a thing from their book distribution vendors.
Inside the Challenged Books
No one denies that some of these books contain heavy topics. All Boys Aren’t Blue, a young adult memoir by George M. Johnson, tells a story of trauma and triumph. It includes sexual abuse, bullying, drug use and racism – all realities experienced by teenagers everyday. As Johnson said in an interview with Time Magazine:
Books with heavy topics are not going to harm children. Children still have to exist in a world full of these heavy topics, and are going to be affected by them whether they read the book or not. Having [this] book though, gives them the tools, the language, the resources and the education so that when they are having to deal with a heavy topic, they have a roadmap for how to handle it.
-George M. Johnson, Time Magazine
As always, we encourage our community members to read the books in question, think and decide for themselves. Our Challenge Log includes direct links to the library catalog. We’ve updated the challenge log to include links to the appeals forms filed with the challenges, so that you can see the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric behind the book bans. Additionally, the log includes information about the publisher’s suggested reading age range; where the books are shelved in the library collection; any relevant awards/distinctions each title has received; and links to author interviews about their banned works.
The book crisis actors love reading passages out of context and displaying so-called shocking imagery at library board meetings (ironically in front of the same minors they claim they are trying to protect, and misleadingly from adult books they are not actually challenging). When they do so, remember that obscenity law requires works be considered as a whole and must be found lacking in value. As Cathy said in June:
Does anyone have the right to say what is the value to an entire community? What are the lasting consequences when you let someone dictate value to a community?
Public Comment, June Library Board Meeting
Douglas County FReadom Defenders 