Library Board’s book decision was scrutinized months ago
Editor:
Anderson County Commissioner Anthony Allen of Oak Ridge is on a crusade to rid the Anderson County public libraries (but not Oak Ridge’s) of books, available across Tennessee and the nation, he believes to be obscene. He has a small crew of vocal supporters along for the ride.
Our Library Board dealt with this issue months ago, opening themselves to the scrutiny of the County Commission, the DA and the sheriff, and the law director, who have now fully investigated the questioned materials and reported on multiple occasions now exactly ZERO violations of Tennessee obscenity law.
Despite that, a new buzzword has emerged: “Community Standards.”
Back in 1973, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, in deciding in the case of Miller v. California, established what is known as “The Miller Test.” In short, it is a series of guidelines that jurors may use to decide a case involving an obscenity charge in accordance with a given state’s laws. If distributed material (like a book, magazine, etc.) is presented to a court as having broken an obscenity law, the jurors will consider:
“(1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient (excessively sexual) interest;
(2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” (firstamendment.mtsu.edu).
OK. So, are the big bad books gonna be put on trial? Is someone getting arrested? Sued?
If not, I fail to understand why this phrase, “Community Standards” keeps getting brought up on Facebook groups like The Well-informed Citizens of Anderson County or at the Anderson County Library Board meeting in Norris last Thursday night (where my wife was present). And it gets brought up in such a way as if there is some written code of ethics the citizens of a community are supposed to follow. There is the “Miller Test,” but that is only for jurors in the event of a trial.
Commissioner Allen has recently been tooting his own horn on Facebook comment threads, and I quote: “In February I brought to the Commission’s attention the sexually explicit books and materials in taxpayer funded Anderson County Libraries. Each Commissioner as well as the Mayor and Law Director received a 1.5 inch packet containing summaries and unreacted graphics of obscene, pornographic and sexually perverted materials all targeting children.”
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! “Summaries,” he says. I thought we were applying the “Miller Test” in order to figure out whether a “work, taken as a whole” was obscene? And are you the jury in his case, Mr. Allen? Man just admitted he didn’t read the books and disingenuously gave others the “bad” snippets, while making an unsupported claim about obscenity and pornography and “targeting children.” None of these things is objectively true. Goose egg.
Later in his Facebook rant, he claims that, as a county commissioner, he is “the keeper of his brother’s children” and, therefore, granted the right to remove books he subjectively finds disagreeable and that are, again, not in violation of any law. No criminal proceeding is to be had here. No trial. No jury. No “Miller Test.” This is all just silly now.
Mr. Allen is among a set of angry people who adamantly believe they are fighting a righteous cause, and it is not to protect young children. If it was, then Mr. Allen would be using his position to publicly grandstand about real issues we face here in Anderson County that affect children negatively (poverty, food insecurity, poor health care, drug and alcohol abuse and addiction, etc.) and would be in full support of public institutions, like libraries and schools.
No. The Commissioner Allens of this country (and county) believe only they can restore society from what they perceive as a society moving away from God. As such, this has become a new wave of American censorship.
It is not new.
Here’s a history lesson, the slippery slope:
From the mid-1960s until the early 2000s, the American school textbook industry was governed largely by Mel and Norma Gabler, a married couple from Texas, who became activists in the form of school textbook censors, appealing often nearly every line of proposed textbooks in detail to the state committee that decided which texts would be adopted.
Because the textbook market in Texas was so huge, textbook companies began self-censoring (a tragic result of these sorts of campaigns) in order to game the free market and ensure Texas chose their books. As a result, states like Tennessee typically adopted repackaged textbooks made specifically for Texas. Therefore, my generation (early Millennial, I guess) was heavily influenced by the personal ideology of a couple in Texas.
The Gablers’ reasoning for having these books tailored just for them? A lack of Judeo-Christian influence and American Exceptionalism in school texts. The white-washing of American history began.
The Gablers wrote the playbook groups like Moms for Liberty use now. If it is not straight and not Christian or not always painting American history and culture in a positive light, it should not be tolerated in schools, even though public schools offer education to plenty of non-Christians of all different backgrounds and experiences.
Despite the fact that discrimination against anyone not perceived as “normal” still exists in schools, the wish seems to be for any cultural moves to empathize with and/or understand the LGBTQ+ community, for example, to be undone.
The target is still schools and now libraries.
I say: Look inward. Get your own house in order according to your own beliefs and values and steer clear of me and mine.
Kevin Powers
Clinton