Notes from Evil Bender

Red State Rabble reports on an effort in Kansas to get Obscenity banned in public schools:

But now there’s a bill in the legislature sponsored by State Rep. Lance Kinzer, a Republican from Olathe to ban pornography in public school classrooms. It’s designed to make it easier to prosecute school teachers for using obscene materials in classrooms.

You say you didn’t know they were showing X-rated films or passing around the skin mags in school. They aren’t. But here in the Blue Valley School District there’s been a running battle over a number of literary classics — including Beloved, Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize winning novel about the effects of slavery — which the lunatics on the religious right insist on labeling as porn.

Randy Scholfield of the Wichita Eagle has more:

“This bill is not about stopping nefarious teachers,” said Rep. Ann Mah, D-Topeka. “This bill is about giving nefarious district attorneys a tool to bring charges against English teachers.”

She was referring to — you guessed it — Phill Kline, the former zealous attorney general who is now the zealous district attorney for Johnson County.

Which happens to be the location of the Blue Valley school district, where for two years, a small group of parents have tried to get 14 books removed from the English literature reading list.

The works include such respected classics as Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Mah thinks the bill would hand Kline an opportunity to bring an obscenity test case against the district.

It seems far-fetched, outrageous. Then again, we’re talking about Phill Kline.

Some people have argued that Kline’s desperate crusade to convict abortion providers of something–anything–was quite reasonable, and so implicitly endorsed the idea that State Attorneys should enforce the law in the way that fits with their religious beliefs, rather than actually doing their job.

They pointed to (now mostly discredited) “evidence” that Kline had found (and “lost” when Kansas voters kicked him to the curb) as proof he was doing his job. No doubt these same apologists will happily argue that Kline knows better than teachers, board members, and parents what their kids should be taught. No doubt they will argue that Kansas’ “opt-out” policy, which allows parents to have alternate reading selected if they are uncomfortable with an assignment.

But of course that no one is being forced to read such “offensive” works as Toni Morrison’s Beloved isn’t enough for these types: they won’t be happy until they can force their biases upon everyone else: if they don’t like a book, then your child can’t read it either, or Phill Kline will sue your school.

Fundamentalists want to use government to force the rest of us to do things their way. When the Constitution gets in the way, they ignore it. When the will of the people gets in the way, they subvert it. Both things are going on here.