Of all the bills that didn’t pass, during the West Virginia Legislature’s recent Regular Session, the one whose defeat I applauded the most was the one I called the “lock up the librarians” bill.

Many call it a “book-banning” bill. That’s technically a misnomer, as the bill didn’t actually “ban” any books. In a convoluted way, it said that a library could stock any books the library wished. But if certain types of books were found on a shelf somewhere in that library, the librarians in charge would be charged with a crime. Were they to be convicted, the librarians could face jail time. So this bill can be grouped under the general category of “book-banning.”

The bill threatened librarians at all libraries, both privately and publicly run. It included school libraries at every education level.

House Bill 4654 passed the House of Delegates easily, on an almost party-line vote. In the Judiciary Committee, the three Democratic members of the committee had a field day pointing out the absurdity of the bill. Debate there took over an hour, and contained much hilarity. In addition to the public relations debacle (the public seeing local librarians frog-marched from their place of work to squad cars), the so-called transgressions were not clearly defined.

Opponents pointed out that under the language of the bill, books like “The Diary of Anne Frank” could be grounds for arrest. Several other bills that failed were quite bad. But I think this one the most dangerous of all.

To its everlasting credit, the State Senate never took the bill up for consideration. Perhaps the debate in the House enabled many senators to realize how silly they would look if they passed the bill.

This is yet another example of the value of a bicameral legislature. One house can get full of steam and pass a bill to “solve” a (so-called) problem. Whereas the other, given time to think, can calm things down.

I think one reason the bill made it out of the House so easily was the performance of one witness called to testify in opposition to the bill before the Judiciary Committee on Feb. 12. West Virginia State Librarians Association Executive Board President Megan Tarbett was totally unprepared for the interrogation by some of the members of the committee, which was in a couple of cases quite vicious.

Megan Tarbett was possibly unaware that a significant number of legislators seem to think that one of the great problems facing our country is the number of published books that discuss race, gender, civil rights, affirmative action and other topics those members consider dangerous to our young people.

The bill would have passed the House of Delegates anyway, but I think there might have been a few more “nay” votes, had this witness been better prepared.

Freedom of speech and the press are critical to our survival as a nation. We must be vigilant and guard against any tendency to ban debate of an idea, regardless of whether or not we dislike it.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.