When leftists start crying about local control, you know that you are over the target. Local control is the fallback position for those who reflexively oppose parental control.
We saw this dynamic at work in Torrington on Tuesday.
The Joint Judiciary Committee took up the state law that blocks local communities from holding their local libraries and schools to basic standards of decency. Suddenly, globalists were singing the praises of local control.
The most stunning example happened when Rep. Jayme Lien, R-Casper asked Tate Mullen, lobbyist for Wyoming’s chapter of the NEA, “Would you agree that sex acts in graphic detail, like [unprintable], have no business in a school library?”
According to Cowboy State Daily, he dodged the question with a word-salad: “That is a local decision that needs to be made at the community level, with the parents, the community members, the educators and the students within that community.”
Mullen’s contortions revealed that the education lobby is stunningly allergic to basic decency. They also spotlighted, inadvertently, that current law robs parents of the very local control that he claimed to champion.
Here’s the story.
The Judiciary Committee’s overwhelming mandate to study obscenity law did not come out of thin air. Long before Wyomingites asked the state legislature to get involved, they were fighting for local control.
For months, locals in Campbell County petitioned the local librarian, the library board and the county commission to remove obscene material from the children’s section of their public library.
Despite overwhelming public support, the library refused to respond to locals. Instead, they stubbornly asserted the policy of the unelected Chicago-based American Library Association.
Finally, locals asked the county sheriff to enforce Wyoming Statute 6-4-302 which prohibits both possessing and disseminating obscene material as defined by the “Miller Test.”
But the local county attorney passed it to the Weston County Attorney, who declined to press charges.
It’s not that the definition of obscene material is unclear. The statute is plenty clear, and its “Miller Test” has been upheld by courts for decades. But embedded in the statute is the so-called library exception by which the state legislature gives a pass to libraries and schools.
The library exception means that Wyoming’s prohibition against disseminating clearly obscene material “shall not apply to any person who may produce, reproduce, possess or disseminate obscene material… In the course of bona fide school, college, university, museum or public library activities…”
Bizarrely, the very laws that are meant to protect the innocence of children can be prosecuted against parents, grandparents, and your average man on the street. But they cannot be applied to the people who have the greatest access to your children outside the home—teachers and librarians.
Wyoming law did not always have this strange carve out.
For many decades, Wyoming’s obscenity law applied to everyone without discrimination. During those decades, the criminal justice system was not clogged with hapless librarians who inadvertently broke obscenity laws. Librarians were quite safe, thank you.
Rather, during those decades, parents were free to let their children wander the library unsupervised. No parent worried that her prepubescent kid might stumble upon the picture of an explicit sex act—or pornographic descriptions meant to arouse prurient interests.
But on February 19, 1982, Wyoming’s Senate Judiciary committee added the library exception to Senate File 63. It was adopted and eventually passed by the full legislature. Although Governor Hershler declined to sign it, the library exception has been part of Wyoming law since July 1, 1983.
Now that law is back under consideration of the Joint Judiciary Committee. After 42 years, the Committee can reassess its previous work in the light of real-world experience.
Whatever arguments were made to insert the library exception into law can be evaluated in hindsight. Legislators should be asking if its unintended consequences are worth it.
What the Committee hath given, the Committee can take away.
Carve-outs that exempt librarians and teachers from the laws of common decency did not come down from heaven. They were not etched on tablets of stone. And our lawmakers should not treat them as sacrosanct.
It is high time for our lawmakers to inform themselves of the full legislative history of the library exception—all the way back to the perverted and fraudulent sexologist, Alfred Kinsey. Judith Reisman’s research is a good place to start.
Armed with the facts, our elected representatives should repeal the library exception, and return local control to citizens across the state.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
