A ban on book bans: Oregon bill would protect access to library materials • Oregon Capital Chronicle:
The bill does not remove existing standards for determining if a book is appropriate, but it adds the additional requirement that a book cannot be excluded or removed because of the perspective it represents, said bill sponsor Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland.
Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, at the Oregon Legislature on Feb. 12, 2024. (Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
“If folks only allege there’s inappropriate material when that material is by or about a protected class, then that’s when there’s a problem,” Frederick said.Public libraries and schools saw more attempts to remove books between July 2023 and 2024 than in any year since the Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse at the State Library began tracking challenges. Nearly 90% of those challenges were to books written by or about underrepresented groups, according to a letter State Librarian Wendy Cornelisen submitted to lawmakers.
We need a lot more detail than “underrepresented groups.” It’s only thing to remove a book because an author is Black (already illegal) and another to remove a book for being too sexually explicit for grade schoolers even though the author is gay.
This latter scenario is what almost all the book removals are about. My position is as follows: No book bans in public libraries. Limited bans in schools, centered exclusively around the notion of age appropriateness. What’s OK for a high school kid is not necessarily OK for a middle schooler or grade schooler.
There are plenty of edge cases, the most famous example from back in the day being Playboy magazine in public high schools. It’s impossible to argue that Playboy didn’t carry significant intellectual content while also publishing tawdry pictures. I’m going to argue that pictures of naked women disqualify Playboy from school libraries, despite the rest of the magazine. That may be something of anti-free speech position, but age appropriateness seems a reasonable standard.
Again, public libraries should carry everything.