397: Wouldn't it be weird if North Dakotans had to buy their bibles in a porn shop?

Minot, N.D. — If Senate Bill 2360, which has already passed North Dakota's Senate by a 38 - 9 vote, were to become law, would Christians and Muslims and other citizens of faith have to buy their holy books in a porn shop?

This bill, introduced by Sen. Keith Boehm, a Republican from Mandan, would require that any material having pictures or even "written descriptions of nude or partially denuded human figures posed or presented in a manner to exploit sex, lust, or perversion" be removed from public spaces accessible by children.

That means public libraries. School libraries. It means Walmart, Target, and Barnes & Noble, too. Works of art with sexual content - which includes the Christian bible, which has many stories about sex and rape and incest - could only be made available in cordoned-off areas accessible only by adults.

Like adult bookstores, I guess, and wouldn't that be weird? If a state law, pushed in no small part by scripture-quoting Christians, required the bible be sold alongside actual porn?

This is the stuff we discussed on today's episode of Plain Talk, where my co-host Ben Hanson and I were joined by Cody Schuler, advocacy manager for the local chapter of the ACLU, and Janet Anderson, the director of the Minot Public Library.

I'm being facetious when I lump the Christian bible in with porn. Obviously, the bible is not porn, but SB2360, along with House Bill 1205, which seeks to implement similar content restrictions, doesn't make those distinctions. These bills' definitions of what constitutes objectionable materials are so amorphous that most literature sold today would be censored.

That's going to invite lawsuits, Schuler pointed out. Meanwhile, Anderson noted that the bills seem to be in pursuit of a problem that doesn't exist. "I challenge you to find anything in our library that has pornography," she said. She's held her position at the Minot library for nearly a decade, and in all that time her institution's process for challenging material has been used just four times, which hardly speaks to there being a problem the Legislature needs to solve.

Though, Anderson notes that plenty of people seem convinced that our librarians and educators (and booksellers, apparently, given the scope of one of these bills) are perverts out to get children.

"I've been called a groomer," Anderson said. "I've been accused of wanting to teach teenagers about sex education with pornography."

Be sure to listen to the entire episode.

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