|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
by SHEILA KIHNE
***
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, South Carolinians have special bragging rights. The greatest number of battles which determined the fate of our nation were fought right here in the Palmetto State. While simmering skirmishes reignite in Columbia, there’s one that our Founding Fathers surely didn’t consider when they risked their lives and fortunes for liberty and freedom from tyranny: the fight to protect minor children from pornographic and obscene books in government-funded libraries.
For four years and counting, women from around the state have been volunteering their time to get age-inappropriate and sexually explicit materials off the children and teen shelves, and into the adult sections of public libraries. Budget Proviso 27.1, signed into law by Governor Henry McMaster in 2024 (and again in 2025), requires that, in order to get their state aid monies, “county libraries must certify to the State Library and have an adopted policy in place that their county libraries do not offer any books or materials that appeal to the prurient interest of children under the age of seventeen in children’s, youth, or teen book sections of libraries and are only made available with explicit parental consent.”
Yet the South Carolina state library isn’t enforcing this requirement, instead allowing county libraries to submit any collection development policy they’d like, hiding behind a different law that says county library boards are responsible for policy.
Over $200 milllion in tax dollars are spent on library operations in South Carolina every year and legislators continue to pass the buck on exactly who is responsible for the fact that the obscene, explicit, mature content remains in the children’s areas of public libraries around the state. The legislature says it’s the responsibility of counties, the counties say it’s the responsibility of the boards, and the boards say that the SC State library standards tell them to trust the “professional” librarians.
***
WHAT’S TO BE DONE?
Rather than renewing a Budget Proviso year after year, it’s time to set common sense into law by updating two statutes from the 1970’s and 80’s that will ensure that South Carolina public libraries are family-friendly and well-run for taxpayers.
H. 4123/S. 919 the “Protection of Minors from Pornography and Obscenities Act” updates 1987 law and would remove the language of “The Miller Test.” Miller v. California (1973) dealt with the matter of a mail-order pornographer sending unsolicited, sexually explicit material via the post office, to another adult. Its test language remains in state statutes requiring that a work “be taken as a whole” and “lack any serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” in order to be considered obscene. This definition has been used by activist librarians to force citizens to read entire books in order to make a “reconsideration of materials request.” If an excerpt is clearly explicit (for example: “the moment she put me inside her I came. I mean the exact moment. F*CK, I said, and I curled up around her like a snail, and kept coming about a hundred times, and I said f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck, until she said sssshhhhhh, and pushed me back down”) then any decent, reasonable person understands the book doesn’t belong on the children’s shelves.
That’s an excerpt from “The Haters,” by Jesse Andrews, which is currently on teen shelves in Allendale, Hampton, Jasper, Anderson, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Florence, and Williamsburg libraries with ebooks available all over the state.
One would think showing a librarian this type of material would instantly make them want to move the book to adult, but it hasn’t had that result. Instead, when citizens bring attention to books like “Big Hard Sex Criminals” volumes 1, 2, & 3, which were shelved in the same aisle as children’s in Charleston County, they are told they must read all three volumes of the porn book in order for staff to merely consider moving the title away from kids.
***
RELATED | CHARLESTON LIBRARY STILL INDOCTRINATING KIDS
***
Unlike movies, where the Motion Picture Association of America created a voluntary rating system to comply with federal obscenities law, the public must rely on collection development policies and sane staff to ensure that age-inappropriate materials are properly-shelved. By state law the power to shape these policies is in the hands of locally appointed county Library Boards, who appoint a Library Director. This local control has created a myriad of policies, many of which do not reflect the original intent of the law to protect children from obscenity.
Many counties around the state utilize the American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights” as policy, which deems an unabridged right to access materials “regardless of age”. This absurd and dangerous idea, that children should be able to read absolutely anything, even pornography, is grotesque. The left will often chime in with “parents should know what their children are reading.” We can safely say that parents wouldn’t guess that there is explicit content in some of these books based on their titles or back-covers. Furthermore, the common good dictates that no child, regardless of their parents’ preferences, should be reading pornographic materials.
As the law stands today, libraries are exempted from any criminal penalties for distributing pornographic materials to minors. H. 4123 would remove that exemption and limit the affirmative defense to schools and churches teaching age-appropriate sex education and human biology curriculum, with express parental consent.
County library directors are fully aware of the laws that protect these sexually inappropriate books, which has enabled some of them to “resist” any common-sense collection development policies like the one outlined in the Budget Proviso. They put forth the objection that it’s too time-consuming to actually know what kinds of books are in their collections. The fake news has recently reported that “86,000 books will need to be reviewed” in Pickens County, where their activist Director responded by shutting down children’s programs in retaliation for their board voting to adhere to the law. She was rightly fired by the new conservative-majority library board.
***
***
Library catalogs are all online, searchable by key words and subject matter tags. There are multiple book rating websites online, including RatedBooks and Common Sense Media, that can help deem age-appropriateness of materials. Publishers provide age recommendations, and it’s simple enough to shelve anything recommended “16 and up” in adult. There are approximately one hundred titles that our group has found which don’t adhere to the Proviso language and it takes about thirty minutes to search a catalog for those titles. If a group of mothers and grandmothers can easily find the objectionable books, there’s no reason why professional librarians can’t do the same. If a change in obscenity law pushes libraries to consider reviewing books for content before ordering them in the first place, so be it. As the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in Little v. Llano County — there is no constitutional right to obscene library books.
Another bill H. 4045/S. 707 “Library Staffing Qualifications” would update a 1978 law by removing the requirement for Library Directors, and the librarians they hire, to hold a master’s degree in library science from a university accredited by the leftwing American Library Association. There is only one such program in the state at the University of South Carolina, it’s online only, and of its six required courses, not one covers budgeting, finance, or accounting.
Charleston County has a $42 million annual library budget, while the smallest counties have only one or two branches. Locally appointed library boards should have the freedom to hire a non-ALA librarian as their director. Library Directors should have the freedom to hire or promote individuals with or without master’s degrees to work in the libraries. With self-checkout kiosks, the prevalence of ebooks, and easy-to-use web catalogs, the role of the librarian has changed dramatically since the 1970’s, as have the large tax bills to fund libraries.
***
RELATED | CAMPAIGN TO CLEAN UP SC SCHOOLS
***
While it made news a few years ago when the State Library cut ties with the ALA after the former president announced she was a “Marxist lesbian,” the State Library’s connections to the organization are still strong. The manual for all county library trustees recommends that they join the ALA, lobby against legislation deemed “detrimental” to libraries, and state “firm support” for the ALA’s radical policies. Both the South Carolina Library Association and the South Carolina Association of School Librarians actively lobby the legislature for their causes, and even managed to get most of the Republican super-majority to vote for “increased investment” for public libraries this session. (H. 5041)
Who knows if legislators even know what they did, as it was passed without a reading.
We used to live in a country where the protection of children’s innocence was a cultural norm, and it’s time to draw the line. South Carolina, with its Republican supermajority, should be leading the cause. As of today, the Protection of Minors from Pornography and Obscenities Act has forty-two house sponsors, and one senate sponsor, and there are no hearings scheduled. The Library Staffing Qualifications bill has been sitting in committee in both chambers with no hearings scheduled.
We welcome citizens to follow a new Facebook Page: Safe SC Libraries for Minors. See if your county is currently compliant with the Budget Proviso, find out if your legislator has signed onto bills, and learn how to actively work to protect minor children from exposure to obscene and pornographic materials in your local library. The common good requires that we work together to protect children from the continued attacks on their innocence. South Carolina’s revolutionary history promises we will have to fight every- which-way-we-can in order to attain victory.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Sheila Kihne is a stay-at-home mother of four, and a longtime conservative activist. She’s the current vice president of the Greenville County Republican Women’s Club.
***
WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
15 comments
Interesting story out of Murfreesboro, TN yesterday on this very subject. Librarian was ordered by the board to move some books out of the kid’s section because they were “…promoting “gender confusion…” and had “… content involving LGBTQ+ themes and characters…” She basically said “FU” to the board and got fired for it. The librarian said, “Restricting access to these materials through subjective relocation or removal constitutes a violation of the community’s right to information and a direct infringement on the principles of free speech.” Maybe her next employer will let her ignore their directions.
Contrary to the liberal outcry, this does not constitute censorship – mommy and daddy (or daddy/daddy they/xe can order a copy of the “The Haters” from Amazon if they want little Marely to read it.
I am not familiar with “The Haters.” Amazon describes it as a mystery. What is in that book that you think should cause it to be banned from libraries?
Mark, Mark, Mark– there you go with “banning”. The law dictates any material which appeals to the prurient interest of children 17 and under is to be shelved on the Adult Shelves. The excerpt included in this commentary is sexually explicit and appeals to the prurient interest– this is objectively true. More excerpts here:
Page 169 …be awake because of the boner that you’ve had for the last three hours. At this point
the boner has nothing to do with being sexually aroused. It’s more of an athletic boner, if
that makes any sense. It’s more like your dick is seeing how many sit-ups it can do.
Page 206 Then she reached over and grabbed my dick.
I mean, she couldn’t really get a handle on it, because it was in my pants and stuff. She
more or less just grabbed a random handful of my crotch, and gave it a little squeeze,
and let go, and the world as I knew it basically exploded.
Page 208 ALTHOUGH I WAS ABLE TO GET SOME SLEEP AFTER MASTURBATING IN THE SINK AGAIN
Page 263 …and she was literally smushing my dick under her thigh.
Page 265 She guided me onto my back and pulled on the bottom of my briefs and I pushed them
over my knees and feet and I was completely naked and not hard at all. She straddled me
and pulled her top off and her breasts flopped out and I heard them more than saw
them. She reached behind herself and kind of carefully took my not hard dick into one
and pretty soon I couldn’t really think about anything else and pretty soon after that I
was hard and she took her hand away and I heard her opening some little crinkly
package and I felt her put the cool plasticky middle of the condom snugly on the front of
my dick like she was shrink wrapping it and I felt her fingernails through the plastic like
the legs of a crab fingernailing their way down my dick and she rose up a little and
adjusted her panties and breathed harder and opened her mouth and her breath was
like vegan fritters and farm animals and her eyes were dark and I saw them very clearly
somehow and her hair was stiff with chlorine and itched like straw on my face. The
moment she put me inside her I came. I mean the exact moment.
FUCK, I said, and I curled up around her like a snail, and kept coming about a hundred
times, and I said fuckfuckfuckfuck, until she said sssshhhhhh, and pushed me back down
onto my back and just lay on top of me, and that was how it happened.
271 “No. Come on. You’re fucking with me.”
“I wish I was. You got maybe ten steps out of my room, and then you stopped, and got
down right in the middle of the floor and immediately started fucking.”
…”The first time there was about thirty seconds of foreplay, she put a condom on you,
and it was pretty much over before it started.”
You could have just said it has sexually explicit material in it. I have no problem with books having ratings like movies, so long as the ratings make sense and are consistently applied. I also have no problem with requiring adult consent for children to check out books that have a rating over their age; again, so long as it is reasonable and consistently applied. For example, the Bible has explicit sexual content.
Also, I can see this easily spreading into political content, if left to certain groups. Including most people leading this charge. That I cannot support, and why I am always skeptical when we start talking about book banning. And yes, there are plenty in your camp who want an outright ban on certain books. They do not think the current law has gone far enough and will continue to push for outright bans.
Mark – Wrong “Haters” – the book referenced in this article is by Andrews, the one you found is by Harding – two very different stories. I’m not suggesting banning anything. Just don’t know that a book that is primarily about “Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and lots of penis jokes” (from an Amazon review) belongs in the children’s section with “Cat in the Hat”. Put it in the adult section with the rest of the “mommy porn” (see Fifty Shades”) and no one will have anything worthwhile to complain about (they still will though).
Thank you, I will take your word for it. I have said I am fine with a rating system for books, that is fair and consistently applied. I am also fine with requiring adult consent to check out books on a reasonable, consistent basis that is free of political bias. In different times, that is what we would be striving for.
And of course this is by a home school mom. Does she even let her kids get books from the public library?
I am surprised she is not wearing the obligatory Mar-a-Lago cross, the symbol of fake Christians everywhere. The problem always seems to come down to who decides what is or is not available in the Library. The problem with people like this is lady is she thinks she and her cohorts should be the arbiter of morality. Not that I think there should not be some arbiter of what is moral and what is not, but I can’t see leaving it up to someone who is so clearly morally flawed. This lady supports, as the President of our country, a man who is almost certainly the most immoral person to ever hold that office. A man who has: had three wives and cheated on all three repeatedly, who slept with a porn star while his wife was home with their child, who brags about molesting women, who sexually assaulted a lady in a dressing room, who bragged about going backstage at one of his beauty pageants, so he could leer at young girls while they were getting dressed; who partied with pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein even after he knew he was a pedophile, who has been accused of raping a child; and who continues to cover up the Epstein files, and these are just the things that are undisputedly true.
So I am to believe that this lady is worried about books in a library her kids never go to, when she praises this man in front of her children and exposes them to this filth. Jesus never hesitated to call out the hypocrites, so we should not either. I remember that long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, Republicans were apoplectic when a President had a consensual affair with an adult intern. They said it sullied the office of the President and was an impeachable offense. Now, for Republicans, raping or molesting women is not even a disqualifier. Get your own house in order before you start regulating the rest of us.
It’s everyones job to protect innocent children. You don’t get a pass just because you’re blinded by TDS. *Or, because the child has a cel phone. *Or, because the Bible has adult themes. *Or, for any reason. The CONTENT of some books (near children) violates decency and common sense and in many cases, it violates LAW.
*There’s a whole lot more than 100 grossly inappropriate books. See the download button at link below.
What’s in your kid’s library ?
My child is an adult. But I absolutely protected him from seeing movies that I did not think age-appropriate, listening to music I did not think age-appropriate, playing video games I deemed too violent, and reading books that I did not think age-appropriate. I never had a problem doing any of that.
The problem with people who have TDS (Trump Delusion Syndrome) is that they can’t see their own leader for what he is, and their role in excusing his immorality and fake Christianity. If I still had young children, I could not protect them from that. I would just have to try to explain why a man who cheated on his wives, slept with porn stars, hung out with pedophiles, and molested women was running our country; why masked men are dragging mothers and fathers from their car and their homes in front of their children and throwing them into unmarked vans; why we are putting young children in constraints and separating them from their parents; and why we are ignoring everything Christ said in favor of something that looks more like Nazi Germany. So, do I want morally compromised people deciding what my family can or cannot read? Nope.
@ Bruce – and of course you are advocating that the full unredacted Epstein files be released and are being critical of Trump for blocking the release and calling the files a “hoax”…correct? Name one thing about Trump that Thomas said that is false.
“Contrary to the liberal outcry, this does not constitute censorship – mommy and daddy (or daddy/daddy they/xe can order a copy of the “The Haters” from Amazon if they want little Marely to read it.”
Just because you don’t understand the actual definition of censorship doesn’t mean your broken understanding replaces the actual definition the rest of society lives by.
Amazon sells Bibles. Forget Amazon, you can get a free copy of the Holy Bible from most churches if you ask. Gideons International makes it their mission to hand out free Bibles. You can download a free eBook or PDF of it if you want, put it on every device you own.
Guess what?
If someone successfully campaigned for libraries to remove the Bible from their shelves, it would still 100% be political, it would still 100% be censorship.
The fact that you don’t give LGBTQ+ books the same consideration would be 100% political.
If you really were a professor at some point, you should have the education to understand this, and it shouldn’t have to be explained to you.
same woman? Google her, lots of stuff from MN comes up
“A Republican activist and former House candidate from Eden Prairie is urging people on Twitter to surveil Democratic lawmakers to make sure they’re following the governor’s pandemic guidance.
Former Republican candidate Sheila Kihne (who calls herself “Tim Walz Lies” on Twitter) tweeted “PLEASE take a look at any DFL legislators in your neck of the woods. These people have allowed Walz to ruin MN.”
Then she helpfully tweeted a link to a database of lawmakers’ home addresses, or suggested people could also “check zabasearch.”
“If you see lots of cars or a party going on over the next 4 weeks, please tweet a picture!”
One of her followers, named @MadVoterInMN, responded later “I’ll be checking Ken Martin’s house… and the 3 other commies that live in Eagan.” Martin is the chair of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
@MadVoterInMn checked in again with Kihne to report that he had “just mapped out the 4 and did drive bys to see if there were any Viking parties! None… but now I can do this in 20 minutes, so I’ll be checking.”
To which Kihne responded, “I love you.”
Contacted for an interview, Kihne tweeted: “Just got a message from the left wing moonbat MN Reformer — asking me about my mission to report DFL’ers for violations of Walz’s orders. LOL! Tactics of the old, tired, losing, pathetic Minnesota swamp.”
She then blocked this reporter on Twitter. Former GOP operative Michael Brodkorb tweeted that her “call to action isn’t normal behavior; it’s dangerous and scary.”
Kihne challenged Rep. Jenifer Loon in the 2014 Republican primary for Eden Prairie’s House District 48B, in response to Loon’s vote to legalize gay marriage. Loon won with 61% of the vote.”
Porn has NO need to be in Public NOR School Libraries!! IF Adults, 18, and Over want to Buy Porn on Their Dime Fine! NOT with Tax Dollars! Same with Any that Push all this Gender Nonsense! You are Bon either Male or Female! You want to But LBGQT, or whatever the Letter thing is, USE Your Money!
Liberals are so stupid they cannot understand the difference between a “ban” and age appropriate access.