I’m Dan Kleinman of SafeLibraries® brand library educational services. I have been studying library safety issues for well over two decades.
I support 2022 Idaho House Bill 666 to eliminate the exemption of library and school employees from the law regarding dissemination to children of materials harmful to them. There is a specific reason why I support HB 666 and why I urge legislators to support it as well.
Librarians are trained that the provision of child pornography including graphics is an essential part of librarianship (per Library Bill of Rights—it’s merely an aspirational creed—that calls it “age” discrimination to keep children from any material whatsoever (https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill)) because only a judge can determine what is child pornography and only on a case by case basis, so until a judge makes that decision about a particular book, any books may not be considered child pornography by librarians. This training has led to school children nationwide getting books in school that depict, for example in the case of “Gender Queer,” young boys giving oral sex to men. The book is defended by librarians for 1) not being child porn, 2) being taken out of context since the Miller v. California case, librarians are trained, requires obscenity to be considered as a whole, and 3) being the “lived experience” of the LGBTQ+ community.
None of those reasons are true, but the point is school children are defenseless against school librarians and teachers making such pervasively vulgar books available to them as a matter of policy. I think we can all agree that depictions of boys given men oral sex are harmful to minors. Yet librarians give school children such books with alacrity, guided by their library associations to do so, such as the American Library Association that gave the book an “Alex Award” (https://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/2020-alex-award-winners-2) as an adult book that has “special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18” (https://www.ala.org/awardsgrants/alex-awards). So, according to American Library Association, “Gender Queer” and its child porn depiction has special appeal for 12 year olds. They are not even teens and librarians give such books awards to maximize the books exposure and get it into the hands of more children.
These librarians who give children such books would be considered groomers were it not for the specific protection provided by current Idaho law that HB 666 seeks to strike. Striking such protection will not turn librarians into instant groomers; rather it will incentivize them to stop providing school children with material harmful to minors. Only Idaho legislators can make that happen, only by supporting HB 666. We have seen librarians will not stop harmful materials from being provided to children in schools, rather they are encouraged and awarded for doing so. Idaho legislators are literally the last line of defense for school children.
This is but the tip of the iceberg, a fifty year huge iceberg that has led to graphic pedophilic oral sex scenes in public school books, librarians who promote that, and an aged law that can no longer stop the damage being done.
HB 666 is designed to change that. It will stop the flow of material harmful to children in schools that school librarians themselves are directly responsible for causing.
Librarians brought this on, not the bill’s sponsors. This proposed law is not being brought by conservatives or Christians or activists or any other excuse not to pass it, rather it is being brought by five decades of ever lowering standards starting with the ACLU board member until the point where librarians are defending child porn for school children as “freadom” (https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/censorship-in-texas-freadom-campaign-inception-reflection-highlights/) or “intellectual freedom.”
Even School Library Journal is in on it (https://www.slj.com/story/newsfeatures/courage-is-contagious-martha-hicksons-story-is-the-inspiration-that-we-need) by providing a detailed guide for how school librarians can defend such material when parents “attack” (https://www.slj.com/story/from-the-breaking-point-to-fighting-anew-school-librarian-martha-hickson-shares-her-story-of-battling-book-banning-censorship). They act like they know what they are doing and everyone thinks that they do. So they get away with it year after year for decades.
HB 666 is a legislative means to stop it. Given how school librarians are today, children have no defense against harmful material unless legislators act to pass HB 666. Failure to act will mean graphic pedophilic scenes in school books will only get piled higher and deeper. That ACLU/ALA leader Judith Krug was quoted as saying, “Parents who would tell their children not to read Playboy ‘don’t really care about their kids growing up and learning to think and explore. (9/18/95 Citizen Magazine [shown at top])”
For the children of Idaho who have no other defenders in respect to 18-1517, please pass HB 666 to stem the flow of graphic child porn and other harmful material in Idaho’s public schools.
Respectfully,
Dan Kleinman
SafeLibraries® brand library educational services
SafeLibraries@pm.me
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