SALT LAKE CITY – Utah Rep. Ken Ivory (R-West Jordan) can proudly claim authorship of House Bill 29 (Sensitive Materials Review Amendments). But – with more than 30 GOP co-sponsors in the 2024 general session of the Legislature – Utah Democrats are reasonably justified in blaming all Republicans for the new book banning statute.
“The Republican Party may say that they’re the party of liberty, but their actions tell a different story,” according to Thom DeSirant, the executive director of the Utah Democratic Party.
“As long as they are trying to control what your children can and can’t read,” he argues in a warning all families with school age children, “they cannot pretend to stand for your freedoms.”
Ivory hosted a celebration of the success of his legislation at the Utah Capitol on Aug. 29, hailing the recent banning of 13 books from all Utah public schools by the Utah School Board. That action took place after three separate school districts banned those books, the minimum trip wire for those books to be removed from school libraries statewide in 41 school districts.
“The materials in question are so explicit that no responsible media outlet would publish their content or describe them in detail,” Ivory said. “If these book are too vulgar for adult discussion, they certainly have no place in our children’s school libraries.
“The removal of these books is about protecting our children, not stifling freedom.”
In his remarks, Ivory also condemned Democrats like DeSirant and some in the media who call House Bill 29 controversial and want to keep the explicit materials in Utah public school libraries.
Guest speakers at Ivory’s gathering included U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT); Utah Board of Education member Jenny Earl; and Pastor Chuck Beickel of the Faith Baptist Church in Layton.
Since the early 1960s, institutions including schools, libraries and museums that regularly distribute materials to children have largely been free of organized attempts to impose censorship.
In 1973, however, the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to define standards surrounding obscenity.
By ruling 5-4 in the case of Miller v. California (1973), the justices said obscene materials are not automatically protected by the First Amendment and offered three criteria that must be met for a book to be labeled obscene.
Those were whether the work, taken as a whole, appeals to “prurient interest;” whether “the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law;” and whether the work lacks “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
In its most recent session, the Utah Legislature took censorship a step further than that ruling but enacting a statute saying that any “sensitive material” could be banned from public schools.
The 13 books banned since the statute took affect include works by Margaret Atwood and Judy Blum; an racy five-part young adult series by Sarah J. Maas entitled “A Court of Thorns and Roses;” and an additional Maas work Empire of Storms.
All of those books were banned because they supposedly contained “objective sensitive material,” according to Utah critics.
“This is not Catcher in the Rye. This is not To Kill a Mockingbird,” Ivory told supporters at the Utah State Capitol. “These are X-rated materials.”
Outside observers tend to doubt that, however.
For example, one of the books in question is an illustrated edition of Atwood’s A Handmaid Tale that was released in 2019. The book is widely regarded as a classic work of dystopian literature about the oppression of women.
Here in Utah, the book is likely being banned as a result of a single illustration of a handmaid being raped, a ritual act of violence that is central to the plot of the novel.
Utah is by no means the only conservative state experimenting with new forms of censorship.
After Missouri legislators passed a 2022 law similar to the Utah statute that would subject librarians to fines and possible imprisonment for allowing sexually explicit materials on bookshelves, the suburban St. Louis school district reconsidered the illustrated Atwood edition and withdrew it.
“Ivory and Owens my claim that they support ‘small government’,” DeSirant warned Utah parents following the Aug. 29 book banning celebration at the State Capitol. “But, when it come to deciding what books kids can read, they think that politicians – not parents – should have the final say.”