Walking Around Jericho: Our Fight to Keep Porn Away from Our Children
A guest post by Noah David Elkins
Thank you to Noah David Elkins, for this wonderful article. Noah is a thurifer for the REC mission parish that he and his family attend in Owensboro, KY. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from New Saint Andrews College and is a teacher and biblical counselor, currently discerning a call to begin seminary training. Noah was put in charge of a task force for a group called Daviess County Citizens for Decency (DCC4D for short) and they documented their findings of inappropriate content (of which the following article is about) found at their local library found in two documents. His article serves as a wonderful blueprint for other groups wanting to do the same.
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“What if we walked around it like Jericho?” I joked.
He grinned and crossed his arms, beginning to stroke his beard. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, let’s do that.”
Our parish priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church/ACNA is immediately recognizable to everyone, strangers and friends, as Santa Claus. But he has the critical flaw of taking my fool-hearty ideas seriously.
A few days later, I found myself holding a thurible (an incense burner) up in the air while I drove toward the Daviess County Public Library—smoke billowing from my passenger window.
Soon after, I was leading a procession of Christians as we recited the Lord’s Prayer together and parted the Red (orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) Sea of Pride protesters. Then we marched around the Library like Jericho, ignoring the many choice and un-Christ-like words they shouted at us.
This all happened because our public library had put up several bookstalls and posters for “Pride Month”, many of which were books for adults and contained pornographic material. And it caused quite a stir in town, as did our procession—which made it into most of our local news outlets.
During that time I often said that the Pride protesters had no idea they’d have such a problem with a guy in a dress.
The next day, per a bright idea from a friend, I decided to rent out all the books in the Pride bookstall. So after a very awkward exchange with a library employee, I found myself with a collection of books that could easily make for some very awkward conversations.
Soon after, I was contacted by a local group called Daviess County Citizens 4 Decency and by the end of that phone call I was the head of a task-force and even had an assistant.
I cataloged many of the books myself. I remember one specific situation in which, as I worked at a table in a Starbucks, I ran into a homosexual scene so graphic that I actually began getting nauseous. Besides being the most poorly written Victorian fan-fiction one can imagine, it was also absolutely vile. The room started spinning, and I had to put the book down, and I almost quit the project altogether.
But then it occurred to me: I’m a married man in my late twenties. I have seen a lot of graphic content in my life. My tolerance is pretty high. So if all I feel when I read this is disgust, just imagine how some 13-year-old would feel if he picked it up. Then I slapped myself in the face, took a deep breath, and kept pushing through.
During the process, we learned many things. But the main thing we learned was this: the rating systems we have in place for films (R, PG-13, PG, G) and video games (M, T, E10+, E) do not have counterparts in the world of books. What this means is that, though a 13-year-old cannot rent the film Fifty Shades of Grey from our public library, he could rent the book Fifty Shades of Grey.
We brought the report to the DCPL board meeting on Wednesday, August 16th. Each member of the board received binders with the 248 books we cataloged, with particular examples highlighted for their convenience.
The leader of DCC4D spoke about the content and about the fact that the titles were found in the teen and juvenile sections of the library. Then he read their list of expectations which included the need to implement an age-restricted system, the need to notify parents that giving their children an all-access pass included these age-restricted materials, and the need to allow parents to revoke their children’s all-access passes upon learning that this content was available. He said that if they worked with us and gave us an indication of how they would respond then we would work with them. Otherwise, we would be contacting other authorities.
It all seemed pretty reasonable.
Then one of the board members decided to ask a question. She asked how this system wouldn’t become a slippery slope that might eventually result in having to age-restrict the Bible since it contains sex.
This led to a brief and frustrating exchange and resulted in the leader of the organization being thanked for his comments and excused.
Then another member of the organization gave a few thoughts from her seat, and then it was my turn.
I had not prepared anything. I didn’t even know I was going to be allowed to speak. But I had continued to reflect on the board member’s comment about the Bible and I knew I wanted to address it. Though I appreciated her deep and eternally abiding affection for Holy Scripture and desired to ensure that our youth were always permitted to read the words of life contained therein, I wanted to assure her that this need not be a concern. In other words, I wanted to make sure she and everyone else at the table knew it was a stupid argument.
I told them about my experience collecting and cataloging the books and then I briefly explained that to argue that this is a slippery slope only works if you ignore the fact that this system already functions for every other form of media, it simply is not being applied, for arbitrary reasons, to books. And if someone were to call it a slippery slope, that person would be guilty of applying a double standard. And then I closed by saying that, if the parents of our community got ahold of the content in our report, I suspected they would feel the same.
A couple of the board members were silent, one seemed concerned, and the other two seemed frustrated that we had even brought this up. We left knowing that they didn’t have any intentions of acting quickly, if at all.
That evening I received an email—it was the press release that DCC4D had just sent to all of the local news media outlets.
Then things got interesting. See here and here.
The fascinating thing to see about the public discourse (on the Owensboro Times and Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer Facebook pages, for example) is that the Left will discuss anything besides the point. There are loads of comments like “How educated are these people anyway?” (very) and “Do these people write the checks for the library?” (we do—taxes) and “They have too much time on their hands” (just enough) and “The Library staff have better things to do” (they don’t) and “I’m against banning books” (we’re not banning books) or “What about the abuse in churches?” (that’s bad too, and so is giving porn to kids) or “They should be fighting poverty or white supremacy or gun violence” (we’ll also solve world hunger with all our spare time). And no matter how many times these responses are answered, the answers are ignored.
The reason is obvious. It’s because we’ve struck a nerve. If you are against what we’re doing, then you support children having access to pornography. But obviously, you won’t say that because that is obviously evil, so instead, you’ll say anything else. Anything else besides what you actually believe.
It’s the same way the Left responds to arguments about abortion and almost everything else.
Whereas, on the Conservative side, we will keep on, very simply, making the point. Children should not have access to pornography. If you don’t like our solution, make your own. But until you suggest one and stop throwing out Red Herrings, we will not listen to what you have to say.
In an interview recently, Douglas Murray talked about the kick-back that finally seems to be coming from Conservatives on social and moral issues. And he asked a very interesting question. He asked: What is the tripwire for Conservatives?
It’s a good one because we put up with a lot. We put up with being told to take drag-shows seriously, we put up with the constant abuse and criticism of our traditions, institutions, and our way of life, we are told that men can have babies and men can have vaginas, we put up with the denigration of marriage, the collapse of our economy, lockdowns, high taxes and rioting in our streets. So what is the tripwire? Why are we suddenly beginning to see a pushback?
It’s simple. The tripwire is our children.
We will not stand and watch the Left turn our world into the dystopia that we see in Brave New World and imagined by perverts like Alfred Kinsey. And if you start trying to bring pornography and hormone blockers to our public discourse, don’t be surprised when we start bringing millstones.
I would like to wrap this story up with a nice bow and say that we won. But this story is still under development, so instead, I will simply end by asking you all to pray. Pray that our children are protected and that evil is conquered, and that finally, as our Book of Common Prayer says so beautifully, we might beat down Satan under our feet.