By Kristin Watson, Coralville
After reading Sam Helmick’s letter regarding SF 347/HF 558, I read the bill and am both alarmed and amazed by the absurdity. Sections b. and c. forbid librarians from providing obscene material or hardcore pornography to minors, under threat of substantial penalty.
This might possibly seem reasonable until you realize it’s already a crime for anyone to do this (IA Code 728.2), so the only reason for a separate law allowing individual parents to bring civil suits is to intimidate librarians into self-censorship. The intent here is not to follow the Iowa Code definition of obscenity, which refers to material the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find is without literary, scientific, political, or artistic value. It is to frighten librarians into attempting to preemptively appease the most narrowminded of the narrowminded, lest they be sued. (The first lesson in resisting tyranny, says author Timothy Snyder, is not to “obey in advance.”) That’s the alarming part.
The absurd part is that the bill forbids librarians from purchasing “any materials with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act … for the library district.” There is nothing in this provision about minors. So, if this is enacted, good luck finding most everything on the New York Times bestseller list at your local library. Not to mention the daunting prospect of carefully reviewing every page of every book the library orders to ensure it is sufficiently wholesome; how would that even be possible? Which is, undoubtedly, intentional.
One more thing: I’m a long-term, heavy user of libraries, and I’ve yet to see a staff picks table dedicated to pornography or a librarian in a trench coat slipping Fifty Shades of Grey to children. I have to wonder which libraries these legislators are patronizing.
