My next door neighbor, I live in Mississippi, is trying to criminalize librarians….Alabama has a law in consideration that would do just that…..
The Alabama Library Association and other critics on Wednesday called out the state’s Republican policymakers for pushing a new bill that opponents warn will unfairly jail librarians and have a chilling impact on collections.
House Bill 385, introduced Tuesday by state Rep. Arnold Mooney (R-43) and 30 other legislators, says that “under existing law, certain obscenity laws do not apply to public libraries, public school libraries, college libraries, or university libraries, or the employees or agents of any such libraries.”
“This bill would provide that these criminal obscenity laws do not apply to college or university libraries or their employees or agents, but do apply to public libraries, public school libraries, and their employees or agents,” the legislation continues.
H.B. 385 would also add the following language to the definition of sexual conduct: “Any sexual or gender-oriented material that knowingly exposes minors to persons who are dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, or are stripping, or engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing, presentations, or activities in K-12 public schools, public libraries, and other public places where minors are expected and are known to be present without parental consent.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/alabama-library
So sad that politicians are turning schools and libraries into political battlefields….when they should be more concerned with educating their citizens and not hindering the teachers and librarians.
It is a pathetic day when the destruction of schools take the lead in state politics.
Turn The Page!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Things have gotten too far out of control!
I agree and I fear this is just the start of more. chuq
I’d like to go back to my home planet now. It’s 7 years today since the last documented murder attempt. Oh ya, and it’s national pet day or something like that. Hey, I got an idea, why not say something scandelous about the OJ case.
OJ is dead and best left that way. chuq
Indeed t’is tragic… and I agree with your agreement, too far, and will certainly get worse. 😮💨🙁🙄. Weird times for sure.
To allow any one other than the parents decide these things is BS. chuq
I find this kind of thing horrifying. Who the hell defines what exactly the phrase “sexually revealing” actually means for one thing? I would think that would make main stream publications like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and other fashion magazines illegal right off the bat. All it would take is one nut job complaining about an image of a woman in a short skirt as being “sexual revealing” to get a librarian arrested.
It is so very sad….my mother did not tell me what I could read and now they have old farts deciding for parents….that is where I find the outrage…..take the parents out of the equation….typical. chuq
I was one of those kids who was super smart but who couldn’t handle school very well. My IQ was, well let’s just say above average. But you couldn’t have told that from my time in school. I absorbed knowledge like a sponge from books, yes. But school? Not so much. I thought it was the most godawful boring thing ever. The only thing that got me through middle school and high school was that my parents took me to the public library at least once a week and I came home with armloads of books every time. Homework? Couldn’t do it. But put a book about physics or chemistry or history or even classic literature in front of me and that was a different story. The idea that people could censor material in public and school libraries based on their own personal religious or personal prejudices scares the hell out of me.
I was basically the same….books let me do and learn all sorts of things and I agree it scares me as well. chuq
Jailing librarians would only be the start. The teachers would be next, then the bookstore owners. Then before you know it, they will be piling books in the town sqaure and burning them.
Best wishes, Pete.
We already some of the minor book burning….but I get your point and it will be closer than we think. chuq
This part I definitely support —“Any sexual or gender-oriented material that knowingly exposes minors to persons who are dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, or are stripping, or engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing, presentations, or activities in K-12 public schools, public libraries, and other public places where minors are expected and are known to be present without parental consent.”
So they can go home and go to TikTok or Youtube….then we are looking at people that cannot define the term adequately. chuq
who decides what’s “sexually revealing”, though? When I was in high school we had a school librarian who took it upon hersef to “protect” us from such things and she went through every magazine and newspaper that came in and cut out every photo or drawing that showed a woman wearing a swimsuit, every women’s underwear ad, every photo of a woman wearing a skirt that she deemed to be too short.
Besides, there is such a thing as the internet. Even if you somehow manage to block access to porn sites on the internet it isn’t going to matter because a simple Bing or Google search will turn up hundreds of images that you and I would think are inappropriate. I suspect that by the time modern kids reach the age of 18 most of them have seen more nudity and even outright pornography than I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Having been a kid at one time, I can assure you that my generation was well versed in accessing pictures of human nudity and those were the days of the strictest possible censorship.