This article originally appeared on WND.com
Guest by post by Bob Unruh
‘At no time has the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects the inclusion of this type of sexually explicit material’ in libraries.
The American Center for Law and Justice is stepping up its fight to protect kids in New York schools from pornography that leftist librarians are insisting on adding to their collections.
The organization has filed a petition in New York state court asking to overturn a decision from state education officials providing those books to children.
“As we explain in our petition, both federal and state laws emphasize the important role and compelling interest of public schools in protecting children from exposure to lewd and obscene content. Public schools and boards of education owe a duty of care to both parents and students to ensure that the curriculum and other materials provided to students are free of pornography and are age appropriate,” the ACLJ reported.
“Parents should be able to trust that the books selected by their children’s librarians do not contain pornography or sexually explicit material, excessive profanity, and other lewd or vulgar content.”
This case is based on a dispute involving the Clyde-Savannah Central District school board, which first decided to take the sexually explicit books out, but then summarily restored them.
The ACLJ reported the school librarian and others had argued, “erroneously,” that children are entitled to the sexually explicit content as a matter of law.
The legal team previously wrote to the district explaining the right thing to do would be to protect children from “these grossly inappropriate books – books containing extremely graphic accounts of sexual encounters between minors, as well as the rape of a minor child by an adult, and excessive profanity (one book contained more than 100 profanities).”
The organization also had petitioned the state education commissioner, explaining the local board was wrong to interpret the First Amendment to give students a right to explicit books.
“In fact, the United States Supreme Court has made abundantly clear that schools have a compelling interest in protecting children from inappropriate and lewd content,” the ACLJ reported. “Once more, the court has unanimously held that a school board maintains the right and the power to remove such content from its schools.”
However, both state and local education officials took another course, claiming that schools have no duty to protect students, and the fight actually is over the “freedom” for students and teachers.
State officials claimed schools can put books in their library, “no matter how obscene or inappropriate they may be so that they can expose children to diverse views.”
The issue has become such a problem that multiple states now are ending porn in library programs, and multiple groups have disaffiliated from the American Library Association for its promotion of offensive publications.
The report pointed out, “A 12-year-old can’t just walk into a movie theater and watch an R-rated movie without parental permission, so why should it be controversial to apply the same standard in a school library?”
The report continued, “The First Amendment is crucially important in protecting free speech and the free exercise of religion, but it in no way protects a librarian’s desire to expose children to sexually explicit content in school libraries, nor does it protect a student’s right to access adult content. At no time has the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects the inclusion of this type of sexually explicit material in school libraries.”
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