Opinion | Librarians are not the enemy

The May 21 front-page article “Librarians could face prison over ‘harmful’ books,” about some Republican-led states enacting laws to penalize librarians for distributing “harmful material,” left me sad and perplexed. I don’t disagree that books such as “Gender Queer,” which purportedly contains explicit content pornographic in nature, should be kept away from young, impressionable minds. But let such decisions be the responsibility of the community, the school boards or library administrators. For example, the approach taken by one school district in Idaho to require students to obtain signed permission slips from parents to access certain materials is simple and practical.