Port: The best thing we can say about this book-banning lawmaker is that he's lazy

MINOT — The problem with Sen. Keith Boehm’s book-banning bill, which has already passed the state Senate and is currently before the House Appropriations Committee, is that it would cost North Dakota taxpayers an enormous amount of money.

No, strike that.

The problem with Boehm’s bill is that it’s censorship, motivated by a seething hatred of the LGTBQ community and grounded in the notion that the government, not parents, ought to curate the sort of literary content kids consume.

But certainly, a problem with Boehm’s bill is undoubtedly the cost. Boehm seems to be aware of that, which is why he turned up before the appropriators with an amended version of the legislation in hand that, while compromising his censorious vision, certainly reduces his cost.

Hilariously, Boehm proposed removing his bill’s restrictions on digital content. He asked that a requirement for age verification on the online library system be cut, something the state library estimated would cost $2 million to implement.

This was desperation, and state Rep. Karla Rose Hanson, a Fargo Democrat who serves on the committee, called it out. “It seems like it would be an inconsistent application of your policy, just to eliminate a fiscal note in order to get it passed,”

she said,

and, well, yeah. Precisely.

Boehm’s bill also got a smackdown from the state’s prosecutors.

The way things work now, there is a reasonable democratic process through which people irked by library content can file a challenge to have that content restricted in some way or removed. It’s typically handled by local library boards, or school boards, and for generations this process has been just fine, though in most parts of the state it hasn’t been used often, because despite what troglodytes like Boehm and his ilk might have you believe, our librarians and educators are not devious pornographers bent on soiling the innocence of North Dakota’s young people.

Senate Bill 2307

allows any member of the public, be they a North Dakota citizen or not, to appeal a decision made about library content to law enforcement. Specifically, state’s attorneys. They would “have to read the material, determine if it’s unlawfully obscene, decide whether to prosecute the library and potentially be the prosecutor,”

Peyton Haug reports.

Jonathan Byers, representing the North Dakota States Attorney’s Association, said that process would be expensive and burdensome for prosecutors. He’s got a point. Prosecutors have to deal with actual criminals and shouldn’t be distracted by some gadfly perturbed because a junior checked out a book about a gerbil with two dads.

He also said that putting prosecutors in the position of a censor would be “unethical.”

Byers noted that Boehm didn’t bother to talk to them about his legislation. In fact, Boehm, who is not what any reasonable person would describe as a competent or diligent lawmaker, didn’t bother to engage with the State Library Association or the State School Board Association.

“I have not engaged all the stakeholders,” Boehm was forced to admit to the committee.

Think about that for a moment.

Boehm has wasted hours and hours of this Legislature’s time during its hectic session — he’s distracted his colleagues from important debates about property taxes and infrastructure spending — to debate a bill that accuses our state’s libraries and schools of spreading pornography and would turn our prosecutors into cultural bowdlerizers.

He’s done all that without bothering to have a conversation with the people who run our libraries and schools or the people he’d put in charge of his proposed interdiction.

One wonders if Boehm’s ever actually been in a library. Or read a book, for that matter.

Per Haug’s reporting,

several members of the Appropriations Committee were deeply skeptical of the fiscal implications of Boehm’s bill. “There has to be somebody and some entity that has to bear these costs,” Rep. Brandy Pyle, a Republican from Casselton, said during the hearing. “Somebody’s going to have to pay if this goes forth.”

She’s right. There’s a heavy cost to this sort of legislation. In dollars and cents, sure, but there’s a cultural cost, too, that comes from replacing enlightenment in our community with darkness and fear. Unconvinced by Boehm’s maneuvering, the committee, today, gave his bill a 22-1 “do not pass” vote.

Boehm and those who side with him seem to delight in being offended, but the most offensive thing in this sorry spectacle is that someone like Boehm would be given the privilege of serving in elected office.

The citizens of District 33, the voters of the great state of North Dakota, deserve better than this.