Not a fan of any governor we’ve had in my lifetime, still I’ll applaud our Gov. Phil Murphy, who signed a bill into law on Monday to prohibit public and school libraries from banning books in our Garden State. The law will also protect librarians if they come to be level with any civil and criminal charges for making books available to readers.
This makes New Jersey the latest state to ban book banning, surely something we need more than we ever did the banning of plastic bags.
A hotbed issue to be sure, certainly when kids are involved, the cry over what printed material is not appropriate for children, has been going on for quite some time (banning books ain’t nothing new here kids). Whether Murphy’s law (pardon the pun) is far-reaching enough, if it doesn’t include some other slick stuff politicians are always wont to slip into a bill so they can further an agenda they hide in seemingly good-doing, if even book banning was rampant in NJ, I can’t say (the count from the American Library Association was that there were 14 attempts to restrict access to 28 book titles in New Jersey last year). All I know is that, on the face of it, and for now, I am going with this law being a good thing.
I waffle in my opinion over so many modern concerns, when I set my mind to concern over them. Usually, I am just trying to scribble out my living or enjoying my nightly Star Trek repeat (org, series, thank you very much). Frankly, I know I’m just not that smart or really care all that much (and I am going with the first excuse) to keep up. I plead ignorance to lots of cultural/religious/political questions as much as fear anybody who tells me they have a lock on exactly the way things are and the way they should be. I don’t know what is appropriate for what age kids, but the kids I know, are all pretty smart and take in what they can and usually just leave the rest or have a good giggle and move on.
Yes, protect children at all costs, but within reason I say.
Being a writer and voracious reader, I don’t like the banning of books as much as I rail against presentism (taking down statues because the person depicted might have done something in their past that is deemed not so nice by our modern standards, lambasting a painter because he may have enjoyed a misogynistic existence by the modern definition of that term, altering a James Bond novel because there is some language in a book that people find ‘offense’ presently….you don’t want to be offended, then don’t get out of bed in the morning). I want us all to have access to it all, good or bad, big or small, ugly or beautiful, pretty or profane, simply because I think each individual should determine for themselves if those descriptions apply in each instance. And I think we are better served when we come up against that which is not in our daily diet and that might even prick the bubble (is it better to prick your bubble than it is to bubble your prick…sorry, I digress) of our worldview, politics, and religion. God knows modern man (and woman, sorry don’t #METOO me here!) encounter to little of opposing opinions as we stretch the echo chamber around ourselves ever tighter.
So, for now, let’s take the banning or the banning of books as a good thing.
Murphy signed the bill at Princeton’s public library.
