Biblical Fire

My column this week - There is some pleasure in being the one to inform you that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus supports legislation limiting the access of young people to the Bible.

The geniuses Wyoming voters elected to the legislature propose fining librarians $50,000 for each copy of the Bible they allow in the young people section of your public or school library.

The bill is pending before the Joint Judiciary Committee.

The Bible isn’t the target of these extremists. It’s collateral damage. But if haste to condemn books means a poorly written bill catches the Bible in its “sexually explicit” net, voters might ask whether its proponents belong in the legislature.

The Judiciary Committee’s discussion of the bill revealed a serious lack of seriousness among some members. Librarians estimated they’d need 90,000 hours to review thousands of books to determine compliance. Cheyenne senator Jared Olson had a quick and easy solution. Use Artificial Intelligence.

Olson missed the irony of using AI to vet a bill that demonstrates so little PI, i.e., political intelligence. Green River Representative Marlene Brady (R-Freedom Caucus) provided more evidence of that irony. A pastor testified on the bill. He worried the Bible included sexually explicit stories subjecting it to the bill’s penalties. Brady disagreed. “The Bible,” she told colleagues, “is the Creator’s message to the beauty of the relationship between a marriage, a man and a woman (sic).”

Those words would make beautiful needlepoint for her pillowcase. There they could be hidden from those who know the words display gross ignorance of the Bible. It appears Brady never read the Holy Book. She might want to check it out while it’s still legal for her library to have it on the shelves.

When the culling begins, books read by students for decades will be taken from students; “Anne Frank’s Diary,” Judy Blume’s “Forever,” “Catcher in the Rye,” Huxley’s “Brave New World,” and the Bible. Yes, the Bible. Sorry Rep. Brady, you don’t get to pick and choose which books are censured the way some cherry pick Bible verses.

The bill demands libraries “ensure no sexually explicit materials are accessible in the children's section at any time.” A book becomes “sexually explicit” depicting “sexual contact,” which includes “penetration of the penis into the vagina,” like that time Sampson went to Gaza, found a harlot “and went in unto her.” Judges 16.

Maybe legislators missed the plethora of sexually explicit stories in the Bible. Perhaps their pastors don’t tell those stories because they don’t fit a politically-correct narrative of the Bible’s teachings about human sexuality. However, you can bet those who enforce the $50,000 fines will find them.

How about the incest in Genesis 19. Lot’s daughter gets him drunk, seduces him, and becomes pregnant. That is sexually explicit as defined in your bill but certainly isn’t “the creator’s message to the beauty of the relationship between a marriage, a man and a woman.”

There’s the story of Reuben sleeping with his father’s concubine and the time Judah “went into” the Canaanite Shuah. They won’t go unnoticed by book monitors nor will the “whoredoms of Egypt,” King David raping Bathsehba, Tamar seducing her father-in-law, or the rape of Dinah. Brutally explicit is the Judges 19 story of the Levite who gave his concubine over to evil men knowing they would rape her “throughout the night.”

Certainly Rep. Brady wouldn’t want the library’s youth section to include books teaching girls how to use sex to get a boyfriend? The Bible’s Book of Ruth does so with step-by-step instructions. Naomi tells Ruth to clean up, put on her best clothes and perfume, and wait for nightfall. When Boaz is drunk, she is told to uncover his feet (Biblical euphemism for “penis”) “and then do whatever he tells you.”

For these and other reasons, this bill is an outrageous attack on decent librarians. It is likely to shut down the youth section of every library in Wyoming and could financially destroy most libraries. On the bright side, there is some pleasure in being the one to inform you that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus supports legislation limiting the God-given right of young people to have access to the Bible.