Where is the “obscenity” that apparently concerns members of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee?

Committee members voted Monday to support a measure that would remove protections in the state’s obscenity laws for K-12 teachers. The law currently allows teachers a certain amount of latitude to defend their use of educational materials that some allege are obscene. The bill approved Monday would preserve that right only for teachers at the postsecondary level.

But where are these materials?

“The practical effect of this defense is that materials that would be illegal if sold at a porn shop may be legal if displayed to a kindergarten class,” said Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, who is pushing the proposed bill.

Can Kinzer or anyone else cite an example of even marginally “obscene” materials being used in a kindergarten curriculum? If not, then we must assume that the state’s teachers, school administrators and school boards are showing at least a certain amount of sound judgment. That’s what they are hired and elected to do and there’s no indication that they need the help of new state laws to do that job.

So why are legislators pursuing this issue? Rep. Ann Mah, whose district includes southwestern Douglas County, cast the lone vote against the measure in the House committee and suggested the legislation would clear the way for Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline to prosecute English teachers in that county’s Blue Valley school district. It’s obvious Kline is the lightning rod, the person to blame for raising any question of what materials are used in the state’s classrooms.

An organization called Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools has been trying for two years to have a group of 14 books banned from the Blue Valley district’s high school classrooms. Those books include such works as “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “Beloved” and “The Awakening.” Although the books, many of them by minority authors, have received considerable literary acclaim, the Blue Valley district, as well as the Lawrence school district, clearly allows parents who find such works to be “obscene” to ask that their children not be required to read them.

The same “opt-out” standard also should apply to sex education classes, which presumably would be another area of concern for “obscene” materials. Should teachers have to defend in court their use of anatomically correct images in a class to explain human bodily functions?

The state obscenity law that the House bill would amend defines “obscenity” in terms of what the “average person applying contemporary community standards” would find objectionable. Kansas communities elect school board members who hire school superintendents who hire principals and teachers who are expected to reflect the values of their communities in their instruction and curriculum.

If school board members in Olathe or any other Kansas school district are failing in that goal, their voters have the authority to vote them out of office. That authority is more powerful and far more practical than any legislative attempts to micromanage school curriculums.