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Public morality, some Connecticut Democrats are discovering, cannot be legislated or created from whole cloth.

Douglas Kechijian from Darian makes the point, respectfully, in a letter to the editor he wrote on the CTExaminer site.

Kechijian, availing himself of his First Amendment right to free speech, wrote in part: “Connecticut State Senator Bob Duff is introducing legislation to prevent ‘book banning’ and ‘shield librarians from all the crazies who are out there suing because they’re not getting their way. ‘Book banning’ is a hollow term that fails to differentiate legitimate concerns about age appropriateness and suitability in a public school setting from partisan and ideological distaste. Moreover, removing a book from a public school library via a systemic process that involves all stakeholders, including parents, is not the same as an outright publishing ban. As is usually the case, specifics matter.”

Democrat Majority Leader of the Connecticut Senate Bob Duff represents Norwalk and part of Darien in Connecticut's 25th District.

On its face, Kechijian noted, “Proposed Bill 523 [written and promoted by Duff] appears reasonable. Books should not be removed from school libraries solely because they are found to be offensive. There should be a formal process to ‘address concerns over certain items’ and clear policies for book curation and library removal. Additionally, librarians who act in good faith should be protected from frivolous criminal and civil litigation. School librarians are seldom solely responsible for problematic material. They should not take the fall for school administrators or elected officials that dictate broader curricular and policy initiatives.”

Perhaps it should be mentioned that Kechijian’s letter contained no death threats against Duff, who claims to have received such threats from inflamed opponents of Proposed Bill 523. Concerning such ill-tempered enthusiasms, it would be well to bear in mind Bill Buckley’s advice. The trouble with bad manners, Buckley once said, is that they sometimes lead to murder.

Kechijian’s letter continued, “However, there need be some accountability mechanism and substantive challenge process when school library books violate parental and community consensus about what constitutes pornography and sexualization of children. In Darien, which falls under Senator Duff’s 25th District, the following passages are accessible to students in school libraries:

· “A cartoon of two minors performing oral sex on one another

· “A pictorial account of a young boy, whose penis is exposed underneath a Batman t-shirt, urinating on another minor in bed

· “Another cartoon, this one featuring a game during which a group of boys masturbate into a soda bottle while daring one another to drink the contents

· “A conversation between two siblings during which they instruct one another on how to masturbate and “eat vagina slime”

· “Detailed instructions about various masturbation and self-stimulation techniques.”

On a primitive pre-pubescent level, the objectionable text and graphics are understandable. Underage children sometimes engage in infantile behaviors. Political grown-ups, on the other hand, should denounce such behaviors as infantile, provided the grown-ups, politicians included, are not also infants in cultural utero or sad “let us make the moral world over anew” moral barbarians.

Politically, every major question facing a republican (note the small letter) majority is two-faced. We want to know “What is to be done?” and, at the same time, “Who decides what is to be done.”

In functioning republics, the second all-important question is answered in state and federal constitutions, and questions the answers to which cannot be deduced from constitutional provisions should be left to “The People,” as in the preamble of the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Our state and federal constitutions prescribe “limited powers” to politicians who may abridge our inalienable natural rights, and powers not expressly mentioned in constitutions are reserved “to the people,” according to the 10^th Amendment of the US Constitution.

When prescribing texts to be read by children attending grades K-8, a sound rule of thumb might be: If the text cannot be printed “as is” within the editorial and news pages of major newspapers, it ought not to be displayed approvingly to children over the sometimes heated objections of their parents. Duff’s proposed bill overrules this commonly accepted cultural rule: The parents of underage children should determine the morality of their households.

Should parents have control over their households and the surrounding cultural envelope that encloses their households and children?

The answer to that question is “Of course they should!”

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