James Swift: After Deadline: How obscene?

Feb. 28—For whatever reason, we sure are seeing a lot of proposed legislation about libraries nowadays.

Most of it involves school libraries, but a couple of 'em deal with regular, old-fashioned libraries meant for everybody in the general public.

Now, I might be biased here, but in my opinion, the only kinda' legislation we ought to see involving libraries are the kinds that give them more funding. I contend now, and will contend forever, that the problem isn't too many books available, but that there just aren't enough.

But obviously, a lot of lawmakers out there don't see things the same way.

There seems to be this fervent ideological crusade against "obscene" materials in public libraries — and school libraries, in particular.

The argument from the anti-literature sorts is that impressionable young minds might get hold of a book about who-knows-what and end up becoming a pervert overnight.

The problem, though, is pretty obvious. The Supreme Court of the United States has already established a complex, multi-layered definition of what "obscene" is and to meet that threshold the content in question has to hopscotch over a lot of legal barriers.

That's important, because the only way governmental figures can prevent individuals from having access to literature is IF it's categorically obscene. Anything less than that is a brazen violation of the First Amendment.

So what does something have to do to be constitutionally obscene? Well, for one thing, it has to "appeal to prurient interests," and on top of that, the content in question has to have absolutely zero scientific, artistic, literary or political value whatsoever.

If that wasn't enough, the material doesn't just have to qualify as "patently offensive," it has to qualify as "patently offensive" using "contemporary community standards."

You might see a couple of wrinkles in all of this. To define something as obscene, you have to also define what does and what doesn't qualify as art, literature, science and/or political commentary. Then you have to define what is and isn't "patently offensive," what constitutes a "prurient interest" and what exactly "contemporary community standards" entails.

Which explains why it's next to impossible to prosecute anything as "obscene" beyond the most heinous of sex crimes. SCOTUS has made a couple of rulings here and there expanding the scope of what can be considered obscene, but by and large, the actual legal test to define "obscenity" in the United States hasn't been updated since the 1970s.

So if Hustler and Ulysses pass the Miller v. California test, good luck trying to keep middle-schoolers from reading Harry Potter or "Twilight" using the same formula.

What seems to be happening, then, is some sort of politically-driven jihad against free expression and consumer rights — with an unmistakable air of religious fundamentalism wafting overhead like yesterday's dishwater.

It's pretty telling that we live in a world where kids are terrified of getting shot to death in math class, child homelessness is rampant and serious juvenile mental health diagnoses keep climbing upwards — yet somehow, the REAL problem is fifth-graders reading books that acknowledge gay people and Malcolm X exist.

We've been down this road many, many times before. Anybody remember the brouhaha over the Robert Mapplethorpe art exhibits back in the early '90s? The argument then — and the argument we're hearing again today — is that since public dollars are being used to fund something, things that we find personally objectionable for whatever ideological/political/religious reason shouldn't get tax dollars.

Well, I can't say I'm a very big fan of my tax dollars going towards biological weapons research and financing paramilitary groups in the Middle East and bailing out law enforcement agencies when they get sued for using excessive force. But I don't have much of a say there and if I don't pay my fair share every tax season, Uncle Sam can come after me.

Perhaps YOUR definition of what's offensive isn't shared by everybody else. The only fair way to do things, then, is to either get rid of EVERYTHING that ANYBODY thinks is offensive or let people have access to whatever they like — with scant exceptions based on the few things all level-headed community members can agree upon — and just let folks live their lives as is.

Just one of those routes is constitutional, by the way. The other route, seemingly, is the one a lot of lawmakers want to travel.