To the Editor:
In June, a number of candidates on the current Old Lyme and Lyme RTC slates, including Board of Ed candidates Mary Powell St. Louis and Mike Presti, signed a letter seeking removal of sex ed books from the Young Adult section of the public library. Surrogates continue this shameless campaign even now, and have gone so far as to publicly call for the resignation of Democrats on the Board of Education who have rejected this censorship.
So what’s all the fuss about? Two cartoon sex education books. Are the books obscene? Unequivocally: no. From a legal perspective it isn’t even close. The U.S. Supreme Court addressed this issue in Miller v. California. There, the Court noted that in order for a book to be determined obscene, one must review it “taken as a whole” and find that its primary purpose was to appeal to “prurient interests” (i.e. to turn people on). The Court understood that context matters. It understood that historically censorship proponents often cherry-picked “objectionable” out-of-context snippets to the detriment of society. For example, the previously governing Comstock Laws led to anatomy textbooks being prohibited from being sent to medical students on obscenity grounds. (At least those future doctors didn’t have to see naked people!)
A reasonable person would see that taken as a whole, these books are meant as a form of relatable and informal sex education – a sometimes goofy but genuinely sincere attempt to answer the very real questions that might stem from an often confusing and clinical school curriculum.
Unless they are your own kids, attempting to “hide” that resource from teens who seek it out isn’t just wrong, it’s unconstitutional. The federal court in a case called Sund v. Wichita Falls, found that “the First Amendment to the United States Constitution indisputably protect(s) the right to receive information” and therefore the First Amendment is violated by “the forced removal of children’s books to the adult section of the Library.” Almost a duplicate of the facts here. (But the Court does give a solution, “if a parent wishes to prevent her child from reading a particular book, that parent can and should accompany the child to the Library, and should not prevent all children in the community from gaining access to constitutionally protected materials.”) That should end this. These books are by definition not obscene, and banning them, moving them, or restricting them is unconstitutional censorship. That’s the law.
So why are we still having this conversation? Because certain people have made a choice. They’ve gone “all in.” They’ve decided that the national Republican Party has cracked the code to victory.
And that code means book bans are on the ballot.
Sincerely,
David Rubino,
Old Lyme.
Thank you, Attorney Rubino. If “past is prologue,” you will soon be accused of supporting pornography for children; along with the more than 400 Old Lyme and Lyme residents who opposed, in writing, the attempt to ban books and censor content.
Frankly, in drafting an earlier response to the ridiculous demand for the resignations of these elected members of the Region 18 BOE, I was concerned that such statements were part of a campaign of disinformation; and bore a striking similarity to the “Moms for Liberty” playbook.
Clearly, parents should talk with their children and endeavor to create an environment in which they are comfortable approaching you for advice or feedback on the issues.
As a moderate, independent voter, I find this to be an unreasonable attempt to connect local candidates and elected officials to some widescale nefarious plot.
There has been no serious discussion among most citizens about banning any book from our library or our schools, and the topic is not up for discussion by our Board of Education. If it were to become an issue, I anticipate that most of us would stand up for the First Amendment.
What has been discussed is age-appropriate access to resources at the Old Lyme library. This seems just as reasonable as having young people wait until 16 to drive, until 21 to drink, and requiring parental consent for children under a certain age to view movies that are rated “R” or “X.”
The publisher of the sex education book “Let’s Talk About It” recommends a reading age of 14-17 years. Yet 6th graders at the Middle School, some as young as 10 years old, have unrestricted access to the Young Adult section of the OL library. I can tell you from many years in Scouting – the changes brought on through maturity and development in the four years between 10 and 14 are enormous.
There is a big difference between age-appropriate access and outright banning. Let’s not try to make banning an issue when it isn’t.
Respectfully,
Tony Lynch – Lyme
There are a few things here that are factually incorrect:: 1) The library has a written policy disallowing children under 12 to be there unsupervised. This is also Connecticut law. It seems odd that people keep trying to lower and lower this age. But regardless it is irrelevant since; 2) All children of any age have unrestricted access to books across the whole library. The refrain I keep hearing is that we need to keep this book from children… but we don’t want to censor it. Any child can take out any book in the library. That’s a fact. So unless you are looking to change that, all you are doing is hiding the book – both from younger audiences AND from the books’ intended teen audience. That might deter some younger kids, or that might lead to younger kids seeking this out among FAR more mature books in the main stacks. No matter what, moving it would certainly not achieve the goal of stopping access to unaccompanied kids. But regardless, this “hiding effect” is why every court that has addressed the issue has found it a First Amendment violation to make libraries move the books. We don’t hide information from intended audiences because we don’t want unintended audiences to see them because the intended audiences have a constitutional right to receive information; 3) The sections of a library are not designed as an endorsement of any books or a “rating” like movies, but rather a roadmap of where to find books. Travel books are in the travel section. Teen books (like this one) are in the Teen section. That is how all libraries work. In our case, the library put Teen and Tween books together as there is probably some overlap, but that is akin to putting together ‘travel” and “leisure”. It doesn’t mean all books in the section will appeal to teens AND to tweens. It just means that if you are a teen looking for a teen book, that’s where it will be. Meaning no disrespect, but I am truly baffled by this argument that the location of the book is somehow meant to be an indicator that it is appropriate for any particular audience. Should a fifteen-year-old doing a report on dinosaurs be limited to only those in the teen section because it’s a high school report? Of course not. They would go to the dinosaur section – even though that is in the main stacks. The sole purpose of the designation of library sections is ease of the user/researcher/reader to find books they might be seeking – not as a statement that everything here is meant for you. 4) This issue HAS been discussed at (at least) two of the last four Board of Education meetings with a signatory to the letter calling for the resignation of the Democrats who opposed it, and the chair of the BoE opening the matter for discussion. In addition, the chair and one other member – for reasons known only to themselves – also reported attending the School Board meeting in Guilford dedicated to an attempted book ban. They noted their displeasure that the bipartisan Board unanimously voted against the ban since that was somehow indicative to them of a lack of discourse. Another member suggested that it was perhaps an indication that they were all in agreement that banning was inappropriate but the two who attended found that implausible.
Thank you Tony for hitting the nail right on the head! The letter/request for the PGN library to reconsider “front and center” placement of “let’s talk about it” was just that, a “request”. The denial was accepted and that’s the end of it…..
Leave it to certain people to repeatedly go way beyond a stretch of the truth. “Common sense isn’t too common”, in this case never ending!