Actually, it should be damn hard to ban a book in Iowa

Your Iowa House Government Oversight Committee met on Monday evening. This was a rare and auspicious happening under the Golden Dome of Wisdom.

It met just two times last year, and this was its first meaty meeting of the session. Maybe you’re thinking they called in Department of Natural Resources to explain how it moved so slowly to gain information on chemicals and procedures used at a Marengo plant before an explosion injured a dozen people. Maybe ask the Department of Revenue how it miscalculated the residential property tax rollback, scrambling local government budgets.

OK, it wasn’t that sort of meaty.

Instead, the committee heard from five Moms for Liberty who ran into problems trying to get “obscene” books removed from school libraries and curriculum. So it was red meaty for conservatives crusading to ban books about and written by LGBTQ authors and people of color.

The format of Monday’s meeting was torn from the pages of book-banning 101. The moms displayed and read the most shocking passages they could find from a list of books.

There was, of course, “Gender Queer,” a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe, chronicling the nonbinary author’s experiences growing up, coming out and dealing with adversity. It’s the most banned book in America. Lawmakers were shown a handful of sexually explicit images from a 240-page book with hundreds of drawings.

“It’s very hard to hear people say ‘This book is not appropriate to young people’ when it’s like, I was a young person for whom this book would have been not only appropriate, but so, so necessary,” Kobabe told NBC News in 2021. “There are a lot of people who are questioning their gender, questioning their sexuality and having a real hard time finding honest accounts of somebody else on the same journey. There are people for whom this is vital and for whom this could maybe even be lifesaving.”

You mean this book wasn’t meant for middle-aged state lawmakers? Stunning.

Another targeted book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie is a novel in which the main character, Junior, leaves a Native American reservation to attend an all-white high school. It won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2007.

Mandy Gilbert of Johnson said she didn’t want the book removed from the library but wanted to be notified her child would be reading a book she believes is obscene.

But here’s the thing. These books are not obscene. A book is obscene if, under state law, “the material, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, scientific, political or artistic value.” These books, taken as a whole, are not obscene by that standard. Not even close.

And given the identities of the authors and their subject matter, It sure looks like this really isn’t about those passages. It’s about a Black author writing about violent policing, an Indigenous author writing about racism and an LGBTQ author writing about real experiences growing up in America. That’s what they don’t want kids to read about. It might bust some comfortable myths.

The parents who testified seemed to argue that it should be easier for a parent or a group of parents, to seek removal of books from libraries and curriculum, a decision that could affect hundreds of students and other parents who disagree. Republican politicians, such as Gov. Kim Reynolds, have led them to believe “parents’ rights” means only their rights. The rest of us can shut up.

Actually, it should be damn hard to banish a book. Freedom of expression still is an important principle in the country, at this hour. We’ve shunned the censors, gatekeepers and book-banners throughout our history. I’ve never been much for slippery slopes, but it seems like we’re standing at the top of an authoritarian bobsled run.

Parents have a right to challenge books. But they have no right to get their way. The Legislature should butt out and stop trying to micromanage and intimidate public schools. Oh, and try providing some actual government oversight.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com

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