You see a report like this...
Librarians could face years of imprisonment and tens of thousands in fines for providing sexually explicit, obscene or "harmful" books to children...
...and, at least if you're a normal person, your first reaction is probably something like:
I mean, we should want to send teachers to prison if they're attempting to give children completely inappropriate, sexual, obscene material! This is easy.
But evidently The Washington Post thinks it's really big, shocking news:
At least seven states have passed such laws in the last two years, according to a Washington Post analysis, six of them in the past two months — although governors of Idaho and North Dakota vetoed the legislation. Another dozen states considered more than 20 similar bills this year, half of which are likely to come up again in 2024, The Post found.
These are great developments! It's absolutely appropriate to criminalize the sexualization and exploitation of children. No question at all. This should be one of the absolute top non-negotiable priorities of any civilized society.
It hasn't always been this way. As the Post notes, until recently librarians "were exempted in almost every state from prosecution over obscene material," in part so that they could help facilitate lessons in "sex education."
Leaving aside the wisdom of having a school librarian teach your kids about sex, the recent laws in question are of course meant to address not "sex education" but rather the spread of extreme, ideological, child-targeted sexual material proliferating in schools around the country.
It shouldn't be controversial to want to ban this stuff. It should be completely normal and unremarkable. And yet media and activists are freaking out over it — underscoring, as Idaho Rep. Jaron Crane pointed out, that explicit sexual material is indeed a significant part of the school library's catalogue these days:
"If teachers and librarians are scared to do their jobs, that confirms the fact that there is indeed material in their libraries that is harmful to minors."
