When I first viewed this video, a line from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol came to mind: “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited….”

Utah State Board of Education Member Natalie Cline is the embodiment of this idea: doing what’s right by defending kids from school library porn without a single hope of personally gaining from it. You’d think this issue would be a slam dunk as far as politics go, but think again. There are a shocking number of educators, administrators, and others who are fighting tooth and nail to defend exposing kids to obscenity in the name of “academic freedom.”

Member Cline won’t find any big money payoff behind fighting the toxic adult agendas of the American Library Association, Utah Education Association, Equality Utah, and other libertine-minded groups — groups that seem to think that the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors, and librarians trump the psychological and social health of children, and who seem hell-bent on savaging those who defend impressionable young minds as “reactionary,” “fearmongers,” and “censors.”

The issue of obscene books and access to porn through online databases is raising its vile head in Utah. It’s vile because porn exposes children to images, ideas, and behaviors that destroy their innocence and rewire their young minds irreparably.

It’s especially vile because there are adults who will argue this type of emotional and psychological overload is no big deal, because hey, librarians have rights too.

Children are at the mercy of the adults around them. Are we as adults going to sacrifice our youth on the altar of “adult rights” to appease the god of groomers? Or are we going to be like Cline, deriving a desperately needed good for others at the expense of ourselves?

“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”