The Westerly Town Council has been asked to endorse a bill at its meeting tonight that would follow many of the most restrictive morality bills passed or suggested in so-called red states, banning books and films, shows and art that some unknown censor deems “obscene.”
The bill was introduced in the state House of Representatives in late April, and is now in the chamber’s Judiciary Committee. The Westerly Council is only being asked to show its support for the bill.
update to this story: June 6, 2023
Westerly Council rejects attempt to have it endorse anti-obscenity bill
If approved, the bill would impose a fine from $100 to $1,000 or imprisonment up to two years, or both, if someone is found in violation.
Sponsors of the bill include Democratic Representatives Samuel Azzinaro (Dist. 37 of Westerly), Deborah Fellela (Dist. 43 of Johnston), Arthur Corvesa (Dist. 55 of North Providence), Patricia Serpa (Dist. 27 of West Warwick), Gregory Costantino (Dist. 44 of Johnston, Lincoln, Smithfield), Charlene Lima (Dist. 14 of Cranston, Providence), and Ed Cardillo, Jr. (Dist. 42 of Cranston, Johnston). Also, Republican Representative Patricia Morgan (Dist. 26 of West Warwick, Coventry, Warwick).
The law, if approved, would also apply to libraries and public and charter school libraries.
The bill makes illegal the promotion “for the purpose of commercial gain” any “show, motion picture, performance, photograph, book, magazine, or other material which is obscene.”
It defines obscene as:
- “That the average person, applying contemporary community standards (meaning Rhode Island) would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest.”
- The work “depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by this chapter.”
- The work “taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
- Defines sexual conduct as an act “of sexual intercourse, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, including genital-genital, anal-genital, or oral-genital intercourse whether between human beings or between a human being and an animal.”
The bill also applies to cartoons or any animation.
While in the first part of the bill it does not refer to age, in the latter part it refers to any person under the age of 18. It’s unclear whether the bill is intended to target the under 18 age group, or the entire population.
It defines “sexual conduct” and “nudity,” but does not say who would be the judge over the standards it suggests. It doesn’t, for instance, define what it means by “average person” or “community standards of decency,” or who determines whether a product has “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Across the country, legislatures in red states have imposed book bans, dictated certain content within schools, much of it around teaching racial history, but also around sexual identity, or sexual conduct. In some cases, a single parent’s complaint could ban a book. As a result, in certain jurisdictions, classic books have been banned, including in the 72,000-student Davis School District in Utah, where it removed the bible from its elementary and middle schools when a parent complained of its use of “vulgarity or violence.”
