A new book ban goes into effect in Idaho on July 1.
House Bill 710, a key political win for the Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC), is targeted at books with Black, feminist or LGBTQ+ themes. It allows any person affiliated with a student at a public or private school to sue its library for carrying a book with “obscene materials.”
The policy defines obscene materials as any literature containing nudity or homosexuality.
While the Bible contains each of these concepts in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, it does not seem that Christian and Jewish texts were the intended target of the ban, but rather books written by queer or Black authors.
IFPC voiced its opposition to The Handmaid’s Tale, the popular dystopian novel criticizing fascism and misogyny, on June 7 after it was removed from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy school library.
Governor Brad Little [R] signed the policy in April, saying that the bill would keep children from reading harmful materials.
The Idaho Library Association is against the bill and says it is harmful to young people, librarians and LGBTQ+ people.
Idaho’s education system ranked 47th in a January analysis of state education levels conducted by Scholaroo.
It’s amazing how you always know you are on the wrong side of history when it comes to this. Did you ban a book? Yes? Ok you know where you are now.
Like everything else there is wiggle room, or you could have been dealing with a no-good alternatives situation, but this one test is absolute. You can make a moral justification for temporary slavery, say your nation is being invaded by people willing to genocide your population and you really need people to work for the war effort. Slavery is often considered the ultimate evil but there still exists situations where you could argue it needs to happen for a little while.
You just can never find a situation where ideas were dangerous and must be abolished from a person’s head. Heresy is always a victimless crime. It does nothing to anyone else that someone commits wrong-think.
I just find this astonishing. Every other sin of the human race there is some crazy horrible circumstances that I can say it has to be this way because as bad as it is not doing it is worse. Except for one.