The Authors Guild, of which I am a member, has filed an amicus brief asking the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a lower court ruling that Iowa’s book ban law is unconstitutional. And of course it is. The subject barely warrants legal examination because it is impossible to draft a content-focused general book ban law that does not violate the First Amendment. And while there is reason to expect that rule to be upheld on appeal, this cautious optimism does little to resolve the question as to why book ban efforts are more energized than they were 10-20 years ago.
Based on the titles highlighted in the AG brief, it is fair to assume that once again, conservative extremists have their righteous undies in a bunch over the inherent “evil” of sex. Iowa legislators join those in Texas, Florida, Arkansas et al. in the view that both fiction and nonfiction works that in any way confront, describe, or allude to sex, or sexual identity, are so dangerous to American youth (even teenagers who are having sex) that they must be removed from distribution.
Fear of sex is nothing new for the religious right, of course, but the current increase in book banning efforts appears to be animated by a reaction against wider social acceptance of a broader spectrum of sexual identity—i.e., a moralizing backlash against openly gay, nonbinary, and transgender persons. The sweep also includes reactions against subject matter dealing with race, and if (God forbid) any book addresses both race and sex, the earth will shake. As such, the novels of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison make everybody’s list.
In public statements, politicians advocating book bans will portray these laws as necessary to protect children from age-inappropriate sexual content, but there is no truth to this implication, either in practice or law. Not only is there no evidence that teachers are reading Bukowski to third graders, but laws like Iowa’s are sweeping, content-focused bans for all libraries serving all students regardless of age. As old as the recurring theme of sex in book bans is the axiom that book banners, by their very nature, are illiterate. There is no more sense in arguing constitutional principles with these people than there is in talking cosmology with a gibbon.
Sure, one could explain for the umpteenth time that the five freedoms of the First Amendment very intentionally proscribe all rationales for state censorship. But for whose ears do we repeat this? Do the legislators endorsing these statutes know even a fraction of the history behind the Bill of Rights? Can they so much as theorize why the Constitution rejected the underlying frameworks of England’s censorious laws? Can they trace any portion of the narrative from the 14th century Lollards, through Henry VIII, Milton and Aeropagetica, royal patents entangled with the politics of the Church, the Puritan adventure to North America, and the next 160 years of history to get to the Constitutional Convention?
I ask because the constitutional framers (some who were total horndogs, BTW) knew that history from reading books! As such, the First Amendment, in 45 words, neatly encompasses centuries of lessons learned about successful and failed states to form a critical building block in the Plan for a nation unlike any that existed before or since the U.S. Constitution was ratified. In short, no book banning allowed—not even for allegedly “protecting the kids” from sex, an effort which, like book banning itself, has a history of spectacular failure.
Consider this detail: the AG brief notes that among the prohibited books is “Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, which has helped countless teens work through the trauma of sexual assault.” By what twisted logic does banning such a book “protect” anybody from anything? Legislators with any real moral judgment should be focused on the “countless victims” of sexual assault, not the books that might help them heal. But again, you can’t explain such things to gibbons. This is what happens when alleged principles are unmoored from education—e.g., when one censors books without reading them. Any position taken to extreme will inevitably cross the boundary where the advocate contradicts his own core values, proposing unworkable, unconstitutional laws that can only be sustained by hypocrisy.
And I get it. I sympathize with the emotion. After all, it would be short work to argue that religious exercise has been the cause of more violence and depravity throughout history than all the smuttiest literature ever written. Yet, despite the mountain of evidence one might compile to support that thesis, the First Amendment is clear: religious exercise may neither be prohibited nor compelled. And so it is with speech. It’s called democracy.
Photo by: mpalis
