Senator Reads a Graphic Sexual Assault Scene, Inserts His Colleagues' Names
The public reading was supposed to make a point about harmful content in public schools.
Content warning: this piece includes excerpts from Nebraska Senator Steve Halloran’s graphic description of sexual assault, as well as other references to rape.
A Nebraska state senator came under fire this week when he inserted the name of follow legislators into a rape scene he was reading as part of an argument in favor of school censorship1.
Senator Steve Halloran was reading a passage from Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky, which he later said, without apparent evidence, was “in some schools, required reading,” as part of an argument in favor of a bill that would make it easier to prosecute librarians and K-12 school teachers for providing “obscene materials” to children. (Opponents pointed out that the bill did not actually define “obscene material” and one, Senator John Cavanaugh, argued that proponents were merely addressing “language they find dis-favorable” during the debate, “which is Constitutionally protected.”)
Halloran began his remarks, “Be prepared to be embarrassed. And any TV, prepare to bleep out the words. And if you’ve got children at home, I would mute it.” This was the full extent of his warning before launching into an extremely graphic scene of sexual assault.
Halloran, himself, said Lucky was “found in 16 schools across the state” and that it was used in five as “an Accelerated Reader” (presumably referring to the optional program that allows students to select optional texts and then take short reading comprehension tests). Cavanaugh did not read from the book itself, but from a “transcript” from a bill proponent.
At one point, reading a graphic depiction of sexual assault, Halloran said, “Something tore. I began to bleed there. I was wet now, Senator Cavanaugh…” Later in his reading of the transcript, he said “I want a blow job, Senator Cavanaugh,” and still later, “I kneeled before him, Senator Cavanaugh.”
“That’s language that should not be in front of children. I’m sorry I had to read it,” Halloran said, after reading it, himself, in a public, all-ages forum, broadcast on public television.
Members of both parties in the legislature have criticized Halloran for the decision to include the names of his colleagues— there are two Senator Cavanaugh’s in the Nebraska legislature— with at least one fellow Republican and one independent calling for his resignation.
This is not the first time Halloran has said something controversial about sexual assault. In April of last year, during a debate on abortion legislation, he argued that “forced birth” never occurred, saying, “We won’t go into details, we’re all adults here and there may be some children here, but no one’s forcing anyone to become pregnant.” As critics pointed out, this comment ignored the obvious reality of rape victims becoming pregnant against their will. (According to the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, “The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.” This is likely an undercount, since the survey relied on self-identification among victims.)
It also isn’t the first time Halloran has taken actions that undermine public schools in Nebraska. In 2017, he introduced a bill to end stipends for teachers who achieved a national certification. He and four other senators also called for an investigation into the state department of education to find “CRT” and a “leftist agenda”.
It’s not surprising, really, that Halloran was supporting a bill that targeted public school teachers and librarians as part of our new nationwide Red Scare/ book content panic.
What is noteworthy about Halloran’s arguments this week is that they are deeply representative of extreme pro-censorship positions among American politicians and political operatives.
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about South Carolina state representative April Cromer’s participation in an ongoing campaign to use FOIA documents to dox educators.
As of this writing, according to multiple sources within Anderson One School District, one of the doxed educators has resigned from their position (though the official reason for this resignation has not been made public). And while only a few pages of the 17,000 obtained by Cromer have so far been made public— and while those that have been made public don’t really seem to prove anything except that parents were encouraging students to help them dox educators, and that educators were stressed and afraid because they were being doxed— the arguments many pro-censorship folks have made sound a lot like Halloran’s.
These arguments can often be reduced to obvious logical fallacies. Here are some of the most common:
Anything that may be read by a student— including optional texts— is equivalent to a requirement that the student read the material. It seems absurd on its face to argue that children should not even be allowed, with their parents’ consent to select a text which Steve Halloran can read live on public television and during a public hearing, but this is probably why the argument relies on conflating allowing optional texts for some students with requiring texts for all students. (This relies heavily on black or white thinking: books must either be required or not.)
Anything that contains “sexual content” is “obscenity”. Halloran ended his comments by saying “we have a lot of lawyerly people in this room”— seemingly referencing Cavanaugh, among others, who had previously pointed out the unconstitutionality of government entities censoring viewpoints simply because they find them distasteful. But central to the argument of many book banners is the idea that sexual content (which can be protected speech) is equivalent to legally-defined “obscenity” (which is not generally protected). As I wrote in my piece on Rep. Cromer and her allies, law enforcement has often declined to pursue charges against librarians and teachers, in part because there essentially never proof that they have included “pornography” or legally obscene materials. (This is a classic composition/ division fallacy: because some obscene materials contain “sexual content,” all “sexual content” must be obscene.)
Anything that is inappropriate for some children is inappropriate for all children. I have never known a teacher to require Lucky as a reading for students of any age, but of course it’s possible that someone is. Halloran didn’t cite any examples in his comments of it being required, claiming only that it was available in some schools and part of the Accelerated Reader program in others. Some students (presumably high school students) could choose to read it; this doesn’t mean anyone was arguing that younger students should have access, or that anyone should be forced to read it. Halloran, of course, did not give anyone listening much opportunity to opt out, giving a brief, vague disclaimer that didn’t provide any warnings about sexual assault or the nature of the graphic content, before launching into his reading. (Another composition/ division fallacy.)
State funding of libraries and classrooms constitutes state speech. The most common argument among book-banners at the regulatory level is that state funding constitutes “speech,” but of course states fund all kinds of things— including public television, which broadcast many different views expressed by state officials, including Halloran’s. State libraries contain all kinds of views, as well, with common texts including everything from The Bible to Mein Kampf. I would argue that censoring a specific text constitutes state censorship much more than funding professionals— including librarians and teachers— who follow established guidelines to select texts. (While this contains several logical inconsistencies, one of the most obvious is a kind of weird genetic fallacy, whereby government officials rely on an assumption that most government meddling/ speech/ funding/ regulation/ intervention, especially from “the Left,” is bad. What makes this argument doubly illogical is that “the Left” or “woke Leftists” are generally just literally anyone book banners opppose.)
Of course, it’s likely that many proponents of book bans/ challenges/ whatever you want to call them don’t really believe all (or any) of these arguments. They are, after all, reactionary arguments. The push to remove books didn’t start with these arguments— for proof of that, just think back to two years ago, when the same folks were frothing at the mouth about “CRT” instead of “obscenity”— but these arguments are responses to the ones put forth by critics of broad prohibitions on topics and content extreme policymakers have attacked. We could call this collection of arguments, as a whole, a kind of special pleading.
Most people don’t argue for extremes. They want schools and libraries to be well-funded, and they expect school and library systems to hold employees accountable for using their expertise and good sense to choose appropriate texts for appropriate audiences and purposes. In my own career as an English teacher, I “required” very few texts— usually only two or three novels or plays a year— and even for “required” texts, there was usually a lot of flexibility. If a student or parent was uncomfortable with a specific text, we had a discussion and found a text we could all agree was more appropriate. (This often never happened, because, again, most people aren’t that afraid of the kinds of texts we require in real schools, but when it did, it was truly not a big deal.)
One thing I would never have done is to read a particularly upsetting or graphic passage to a room full of people, of any age, without a discussion about the content and a chance for anyone who might be uncomfortable to opt out of the content. For people who are actually concerned about the impact potentially triggering or upsetting content might have on children— or anyone else— that seems like the first logical step.
But we can’t logic ourselves out of the censorship problem, and more than people were able to logic their way out of in the past, when the McCarthyites or the Nazis or the Bolsheviks or any or other group seeking centralized power through censorship did it. We have to stand up to it, and we should call it out as false, but we also can’t be tricked into engaging with illogical discussions as if they’re logical. The narrative of “woke indoctrination” doesn’t rely on logic; it relies on intense emotions, and intense emotions are difficult to counter. I think instead we need to build solidarity and consensus around what we do want to see, and present that to our communities as an alternative to the kind of irrational, panicked groupthink (often promoted and facilitated by political operatives who more or less know exactly what they’re doing) that has resulted in an increasingly hostile and even violent crusade against people who we really have no reason to think are trying to hurt children.
Careful selection of books is important, but it doesn’t require state censorship. It doesn’t require harassing, doxing, or prosecuting librarians and other educators. In general, if it requires fascist tactics, it’s probably fascism, and we really need to call it out and oppose it as such.
As an example of the type of solidarity and community involvement that seems to be most effective as a counter to this irrational thinking, I’ll leave you with a statement against South Carolina’s Families Against Book Bans (FABB), as statewide effort by people who want children to have access to books. I encourage you to find a FABB chapter or similar group in your area, or start something similar, yourself. We can hopefully get more done by coming together and being positive than others are getting done by being reactionary, divisive, and inconsistent.
Halloran’s full remarks are available here. Be warned that they contain a graphic description of sexual assault, read out of context, from a transcript of a person complaining about Alice Sebold’s book.