Republic file photo The adult fiction section at the Bartholomew County Library is shown.
The Bartholomew County Public Library director is raising concerns about a bill advancing in the Indiana General Assembly that would allow criminal charges to be filed against public and school librarians for allowing minors to access “harmful materials.”
The Republican-backed measure, Senate Bill 17, would strip away protections that public libraries and schools currently have against prosecution for exposing minors to “harmful” material, including the defense that the material was disseminated for educational purposes.
Disseminating material or conducting performances deemed harmful to a minor is a Level 6 felony in Indiana, according to Indiana Code. Violators face six months to 2.5 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
This past week, the bill took a step closer to becoming law, clearing the Senate in a 34-15 vote, largely along party lines, and now heads to the House. Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, who is seeking re-election, voted for the measure.
“Librarians around the state, we’re very concerned about what this means for us,” said Bartholomew County Public Library Director Jason Hatton, who sits on the Indiana Library Federation’s advocacy committee.
“It’s chilling. I honestly can’t believe it. …Jailing librarians for having materials on their shelf that somebody doesn’t believe in, I think is outrageous to be honest with you. I feel very, very strongly about this.”
Battle over books
The bill has created controversy and heated debate in recent weeks and comes amid a wave of conservative legislation and other proposals to pull books on race, sexuality and gender from schools and public libraries, according to wire reports.
The governors of Texas and South Carolina recently asked authorities in their states to investigate “obscene and pornographic” materials at public school libraries, according to The New York Times. The mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi withheld funding from a public library until all books with LBGTQ+ themes were removed.
Last year, prosecutors in Wyoming considered filing criminal charges against staff at a local public library for stocking books with sex and LGBTQ+ themes, including “Sex is a Funny Word” and “This Book is Gay.”
Earlier this year, a Tennessee school district made national headlines after banning “Maus,” Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, because of nudity and profanity.
This past week, a parent in Texas demanded that a school district ban a biography of Michelle Obama because it represented “leftist indoctrination,” depicted former President Donald Trump and Republicans as “bullies” and made white girls feel “ashamed” of themselves, NBC News reported. The school district ultimately declined the parent’s request.
Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, the Indiana bill’s author, has insisted that SB 17 seeks to ensure that minors can’t access “repugnant” and “absolutely disgusting” materials but does not change current state law on what is harmful to minors, The Associated Press reported.
“These are not classic novels, renaissance pictures, excerpts from the Bible,” Tomes said. “This is not about guns. It’s not about communism. It’s about raw, nasty, filthy pornographic literature. Books.”
The bill is co-authored by Sen. Scott Baldwin, R-Noblesville, who drew widespread criticism last month after saying during a hearing at the Indiana Statehouse that teachers should be “impartial” on Nazis and fascism. He later walked back his comments.
Walker, for his part, said he voted for the bill because “I’m not going to defend someone who is disseminating inappropriate material to minors just because it’s for an educational purpose or claimed to be for an educational purpose.”
Critics of the bill, including the ACLU of Indiana, say the bill doesn’t provide a clear definition of what constitutes harmful material and could lead to a ban on books of educational value that are only deemed “harmful” or “offensive” by some.
“The vagueness of the statute could be used to silence protected speech on a multitude of issue areas and has historically been used as a tool to ban sex education material and material about LGBTQ issues from local libraries if community members and local prosecutors find it objectionable,” the ACLU of Indiana said in a statement.
Several library directors in Indiana, including Hatton, said the bill would “will absolutely have a chilling effect” on libraries and thrust an institution designed to be place of free inquiry that serves everyone into political battle over books playing out across the country in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections.
Hatton said the Bartholomew County Public Library does not have pornography on its shelves and encourages parents to be involved in helping choose materials for their children. Library staff are “happy” help parents find material that fits their worldview.
“To me, the purpose of a library is to have something for everyone,” Hatton said. “That doesn’t change depending on somebody’s values and beliefs. We serve every single person, and it’s not up to one entity or one parent or one ‘whatever’ to be able to say what’s appropriate for somebody else.”
“We have materials that are liberal in nature,” Hatton added. “We have materials that are conservative in nature. We have Christian materials. We have Muslim materials. We have materials for the LGBTQ community. We have materials for those who are straight and heterosexual. It runs the gamut. We serve everybody.”
What is ‘harmful’?
The debate over the bill, however, raises questions about who determines what is “harmful” and what the criteria is.
Current Indiana law lays out a series of standards to define material harmful to minors and when someone could be charged with a crime for disseminating it, though some of the definitions are broad and subjective.
The Indiana Code defines material harmful to minors as any book, movie, performance, image, statue or other material or object that contains nudity, sexual excitement or other sexual conduct.
Additionally, the materials must appeal to the “prurient interest in sex of minors,” be “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community” and lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
However, the provision does not offer guidance on how to measure many of these criteria, including what would be considered “patently offensive,” how to determine what prevailing community standards are or gauge whether a given material has literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
When it comes to the crime of disseminating harmful material to minors, the Indiana Code states that a person can only be charged if they “knowingly or intentionally” disseminate material that meets the criteria under state law or display such material in an area where minors can see, hear or physically access it.
The law also states that a person can be charged if they provide material deemed harmful to minors “to any person” — including adults — within 500 feet of the nearest property line of a church or school, according to the Indiana Code.
The Bartholomew County Public Library is located across the street from First Christian Church and within 500 feet of the property lines of Central Middle School and Columbus Signature Academy.
Currently, there are some legal protections against prosecution, including if the material was disseminated for scientific or educational reasons, and includes a list of entities that are shielded from prosecution. But SB 17 would remove public libraries and K-12 schools from that list and eliminate educational purposes as a defense.
Ultimately, it would be up to a prosecutor to decide whether to press charges, Walker said. However, he conceded that “there’s really no clear-cut standard … It’s subject to subjective review.”
“The Supreme Court said, ‘I don’t know how to define what is obscene until you show it to me, and then I can understand,’” Walker said. “(The) thought process in this is that it would depend upon the nature of the material.”
“I don’t see that there is going to be a rash of charges,” Walker said later in the interview.
Hatton, for his part, said he feels “comfortable” with the community, local prosecutors and court system , but fears that some county prosecutors, who are selected by voters in partisan elections, could make it a priority to prosecute libraries over books they don’t like.
“There are definitely prosecutors out there who would, I think, take this challenge on, and that’s scary to me. That’s very scary,” Hatton said.
Currently, it is unclear whether the House will take up the measure.
Rep. Ryan Lauer, R-Columbus, declined to comment on his views on SB 17.
“I’m going to wait and see how (SB 17) progresses through the House,” Lauer said.
But whatever the outcome is, Hatton said that SB 17 would not change how the Bartholomew County Public Library selects materials, even it becomes law.
And he’s willing to go to jail over it.
“If I have to take that responsibility as the one ultimately charged and responsible for everything that we purchased and that we circulate, then I will do it because I feel so strongly that everybody has a freedom to read. We have a freedom to be able to choose the materials that we want to read,” Hatton said.
“That’s the whole notion to me of what it means to live in the United States,” Hatton said.
