Alabama lawmakers advanced legislation that could see librarians prosecuted for providing “harmful” materials or programs to minors.
Alabama lawmakers on Thursday advanced legislation that could see librarians prosecuted under the state’s obscenity law for providing “harmful” materials to minors, the latest in a wave of bills in Republican-led states targeting library content and decisions.
The Alabama House of Representatives voted 72-28 for the bill that now moves to the Alabama Senate. The legislation comes amid a soaring number of book challenges — often centered on LGBTQ content — and efforts in a number of states to ban drag queen story readings.
“This is an effort to protect children. It is not a Democrat bill. It’s not a Republican bill. It’s a people bill to try to protect children,” Republican Rep. Arnold Mooney, the bill’s sponsor, said during debate.
The Alabama billremoves the existing exemption for public libraries in the state’s obscenity law. It also expands the definition of prohibited sexual conduct to include any “sexual or gender oriented conduct” at K-12 public schools or public libraries that “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.”
I'm in Indiana and my wife is a librarian. They already tried to do this once here and they could certainly try doing it again next session. I'm pretty scared.
Unfortunately, we have two elderly mothers we have to think about. But it may be necessary to move eventually. Thankfully, we're right on the Illinois border, so maybe she'd find somewhere not too far away if we had to move. Also, she's worked her way up to a top administrative position, so it would be a good income to have to give up in a bad economy.
I agree in general, and am thankful there is a law in place to protect librarians now, but I don't know that Illinois, or rather the part we're near, would be a huge improvement in terms of the community and what they might try since the closest Illinois town to us is Marshall, followed by Paris and Casey, and they're not especially big fans of Pritzker. Or Democrats in general. Or individual liberties probably. So it is not as great an option as it could otherwise be. I think the place to work relatively near us would be Champaign, but it would be over a two hour drive to our mothers, who are already a one hour drive away or a 90 minute commute for my wife if we stayed here.
Public libraries should have little to no restrictions on books. Period. We can have all the warnings in the world but information whether it's false or "dangerous" or doesn't agree with my political philosophy should be free. They didn't care about freedom and at this point Alabama should make this a ballot measure.
Public libraries should have little to no restrictions on books. Period.
So, in a private market for literature, public libraries have an enormous impact on who can profit from publication. A big part of this fight isn't just prosecuting librarians, its controlling who gets to profit from bulk purchase of books.
They didn’t care about freedom and at this point Alabama should make this a ballot measure.
Here’s what some of those cases look like, from successful to unsuccessful efforts to alter the will of the people:
• In November 2023, Ohio voters passed an amendment to their state’s constitution protecting the right to abortion. Within a week, a group of Ohio Republican lawmakers declared the amendment to be invalid and introduced legislation that would strip state courts from having authority to rule on the issue of abortion. Ohio’s House speaker, Republican Jason Stephens, rejected the proposed legislation.
• In July 2018, Washington, D.C., voters approved an increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers. Three months later, the City Council repealed the initiative.
• In 2016, voters in South Dakota supported an initiative to revise campaign finance and lobbying laws and create an ethics commission. Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a law repealing the initiative in February 2017. Another citizen initiative to create an ethics commission was on the ballot in 2018, but did not pass.
"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"
I wonder how much media that would leave. Would that only apply to things that have images/video or would that include descriptions in books? That would include pretty much everything. Could end up like video rental stores where they had the adult section where children weren't allowed, except the section is the whole building.
I'm gleaning in on "gender-oriented conduct." What isn't gender-oriented conduct, especially if you go back to less-enlightened eras where shit like a woman being a doctor might be considered gender-subversive?
It goes without saying that the Bible is right out given any test for child-appropriateness. Which I agree with, but I'm not willing to throw out everything else just to get rid of it.
So, banning anything about things like being a stay at home parent, secretaries were traditionally at one point, athletics as traditionally women weren't allowed so can't talk about that, suffrage, voting rights, etc.
It is not a Democrat bill. It is a Republican bill. It’s a people bigotry bill to try to protect persecute, oppress and just generally punish minority groups, including children, for existing
There's plenty of good folk living in those states as well. Plus an entire younger generation who wants nothing to do with all those backwards ways and are rejecting religion. It's just a lot of old folk that want to return to the dark ages.
The problem is these states make themselves so unwelcoming a large portion of these younglings leave to better places. My Illinois town keeps shrinking because we had backwards ass elected officials for the longest time. We had the option to have a metro station added to our town( paid for by the city is StLouis) and we rejected it because homeless people could come here. Well we don't have the network system so I drove 40 minutes to work and still have a homeless and drug problem.
We also voted out first ever mayor of color( former cop) so things have been getting betterish. But we also have an actual evil rich villain who is now evading the law because he was trafficking drugs and children. This is a current ongoing investigation. I'd rather not doxx my town but last time we made national news our former mayor's wife was caught doing coke in the local bars during COVID shutdown. He told her not to come home and divorced her ass tho.
Sorry I ranted there, but all those with the means to leave do because not everyone has the capacity to make things better and deal with everything that comes with it.
I love that little sound bite: this isn't a Republican or Democrat bill. Oh really? Do you have any sponsors from the other side of the aisle? Do you expect any of them to vote for it? Has anyone from your side come out against it? No? Guess what kind of bill it is.