They think the Supreme Court might just let them do it.
—a book cannot be found obscene based only on a selection of its most salacious bits. Books must be considered “as a whole” and, if they have serious literary, artistic, political, or social value, cannot be ruled obscene. Anderson seeks to redefine that standard: “I think that when you’re talking about an adult looking at the material, maybe you can use that standard.
, Anderson goes all-in on describing the books’ sexual content. There’s also a lot of talk of undeveloped prefrontal cortexes, the harm such explicit images could do to “highly susceptible” children, and a full-page aside about the “Marxist ideology” of the American Library Association.“If you, an adult, read something, or my 12-year-old reads that same thing, can it be obscene to the 12-year-old and not to you?” Anderson asked me. It was clear he thought so.