Public morality, some Connecticut Democrats are discovering, cannot be legislated or created from whole cloth.
Douglas Kechijian from Darian makes the point, respectfully,
in a letter to the editor he wrote on the CTExaminer site.
Kechijian, availing himself of his First Amendment right to
free speech, wrote in part: “Connecticut State Senator Bob Duff is introducing
legislation to prevent ‘book banning’ and ‘shield librarians from all the
crazies who are out there suing because they’re not getting their way. ‘Book
banning’ is a hollow term that fails to differentiate legitimate concerns about
age appropriateness and suitability in a public school setting from partisan
and ideological distaste. Moreover, removing a book from a public school
library via a systemic process that involves all stakeholders, including
parents, is not the same as an outright publishing ban. As is usually the case,
specifics matter.”
Democrat Majority Leader of the Connecticut Senate Bob Duff
represents Norwalk and part of Darien in Connecticut's 25th District.
On its face, Kechijian noted, “Proposed Bill 523 [written
and promoted by Duff] appears reasonable. Books should not be removed from
school libraries solely because they are found to be ‘offensive. There should
be a formal process to ‘address concerns over certain items’ and clear policies
for book curation and library removal. Additionally, librarians who act in good
faith should be protected from frivolous criminal and civil litigation. School
librarians are seldom solely responsible for problematic material. They should
not take the fall for school administrators or elected officials that dictate broader
curricular and policy initiatives.”
Perhaps it should be mentioned that Kechijian’s letter
contained no death threats against Duff, who claims to have received such
threats from inflamed opponents of Proposed Bill 523. Concerning such
ill-tempered enthusiasms, it would be well to bear in mind Bill Buckley’s advice.
The trouble with bad manners, Buckley once said, is that they sometimes lead to
murder.
Kechijian’s letter continued, “However, there need be some
accountability mechanism and substantive challenge process when school library
books violate parental and community consensus about what constitutes
pornography and sexualization of children. In Darien, which falls under Senator
Duff’s 25th District, the following passages are accessible to students in
school libraries:
· “A cartoon of two minors performing oral sex on
one another
·
“A pictorial account of a young boy, whose penis
is exposed underneath a Batman t-shirt, urinating on another minor in bed
·
“Another cartoon, this one featuring a game during
which a group of boys masturbate into a soda bottle while daring one another to
drink the contents
· “A conversation between two siblings during which they instruct one another on how to masturbate and 'eat vagina slime'
· “Detailed instructions about various masturbation and self-stimulation techniques.”
On a primitive pre-pubescent level, the objectionable text
and graphics are understandable. Underage children sometimes engage in infantile
behaviors. Political grown-ups, on the other hand, should denounce such
behaviors as infantile, provided the grown-ups, politicians included, are not
also infants in cultural utero or sad “let us make the moral world over anew”
moral barbarians.
Politically, every major question facing a republican (note
the small letter) majority is two-faced. We want to know “What is to be done?”
and, at the same time, “Who decides what is to be done.”
In functioning republics, the second all-important question
is answered in state and federal constitutions, and questions the answers to
which cannot be deduced from constitutional provisions should be left to “The People,” as in the preamble
of the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a
more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for
the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.”
Our state and federal constitutions prescribe “limited
powers” to politicians who may abridge our inalienable natural rights, and
powers not expressly mentioned in constitutions are reserved “to the people,”
according to the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution.
When prescribing texts to be read by children attending
grades K-8, a sound rule of thumb might be: If the text cannot be printed “as
is” within the editorial and news pages of major newspapers, it ought not to be
displayed approvingly to children over the sometimes heated objections of their
parents. Duff’s proposed bill overrules this commonly accepted cultural rule:
The parents of underage children should determine the morality of their
households.
Should parents have control over their households and the surrounding
cultural envelope that encloses their households and children?
The answer to that question is “Of course they should!”
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