Shawn Vestal: Next up for the anti-education ideologues — North Idaho’s libraries

How will we know when Idaho has been made great again?

When the last ob/gyn packs up and moves out?

When all the colleges have been decommissioned and the schools defunded? When pregnant women are put under house arrest to keep them from crossing into a free state?

The ideocratic descent of Idaho politics, which seems to be accelerating, is easy to mock but heart-breaking if you have love for the state. Extremist ideologues are infesting previously apolitical spaces and ruining them.

If that sounds like hyperbole, just consider the North Idaho College debacle.

A North Idaho library district now stands in danger of getting the same treatment, with a couple of hand-picked candidates of the local GOP machine running on a “good vs. evil” campaign to wipe clean the shelves of any book they deem “pornography” – which is many, many books that are not pornography – and protecting children from the pernicious librarians who are trying to pervert them.

If they win, a majority of book banners will control the Community Library District, which operates libraries in eight towns in Kootenai and Shoshone counties.

It’s far from the first anti-library, book-banning campaign to swamp library districts, almost all targeting books involving gay characters, stories of historical racism or mature content. A pitchforks-and-torches campaign drove away Boundary County’s library director, Kimber Glidden, only last year.

Defenders of free speech and libraries in North Idaho are organizing in response and hoping to bring out a majority of voters who might ordinarily not even be aware of library board elections. They see this as a campaign for the very future of the libraries and the community’s access to information.

“We are protecting our libraries for our children and future generations,” said Emily Christopherson, of the Community Library Network Alliance.

Christopherson, who home-schools her children and thus uses the library a lot, formed the alliance last November and said it has about 500 members. It does not formally endorse candidates but is working to tell a positive, accurate story about libraries and to inform the public about the election on May 16.

She’s hoping that the loudest, most theatrical voices – the ones now trying to drown out library board meetings – don’t represent the majority.

“Censorship is really unpopular in Idaho,” she said. “I think the First Amendment is really important to Idahoans and free speech is important.”

Here’s hoping. The same group that produced the NIC board debacle – the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee – has endorsed two candidates for the library district board who seem very eager to start some book bonfires.

One of the current challengers, Tom Hanley, promises: “I’m going to permanently remove all the offensive books for minors once and for all!”

Another, Tim Plass, pledges to clear out all books that are immoral or promote vice, “even in the adult sections.”

In a letter sent to potential donors, Plass and Hanley claim, “Hundreds of books containing obscene, sexually explicit material are available to minors and are even being promoted in the Children’s Areas” of the system’s libraries. They promote themselves – absurdly, given the big red stamp of the KCRCC on their foreheads – as nonpartisan, saying “it is an openly good vs. evil issue.”

They are running against incumbent board members Regina McRea and Judy Meyer. McRea is running on a platform of protecting the ability of libraries to offer a broad range of materials and respects the rights of all library users. Meyer – a towering figure in the civic life of the Lake City – is similarly running to preserve library services for everyone.

“That means no political, social or religious agendas imposed upon our patrons,” she said in a campaign statement posted at the Community Library Network Alliance.

These values were once so mainstream they would be boring. In the days of the book police, though, all bets are off.

A group supporting the two challengers, CleanBooks4Kids, has been scouring local libraries, looking for the whisper of a gay person or a kiss or snuggle inside any book, any sexual content anywhere, and slapping it onto a list meant to illustrate that there is “abundant graphic pornography & obscenity throughout books for minors.”

It might be funny – these Ahabs maniacally chasing their whales – if not for the fact that it could do real damage to the libraries and communities.

It should go without saying that librarians are not trying to pervert children, and that even the most explicit passage in a novel is not pornography. It should go without saying that no adult in any community needs a moral censor scouring the books they want to read for naughty bits. It should go without saying that the mere presence of gay or trans characters in a work of literature – even one for kids – is not obscene.

The fact that it doesn’t? Not great.