Alabama lawmakers advance bill that could lead to prosecution of librarians
Source: Associated Press
Alabama lawmakers advance bill that could lead to prosecution of librarians
BY KIM CHANDLER
Updated 10:53 PM EDT, April 25, 2024
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — 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 bill removes 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.”
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/alabama-legislature-libraries-books-2f6c0c953722f0090f4e6265b8c7433b
= new reply since forum marked as read
/rant on
They are so much smarter than anyone ever gives them credit for. Let the children decide what they need from literature. I remember plowing through my parents library at a very early age thirsty for information on life, the universe, and absolutely everything. I'd already exhausted several dictionaries, the entire World Book Encyclopedia + supplements, and that awesome ...was it the Merck Manual with the transparencies of the human bodies, male and female, showing all the insides and outsides of human beings who all look the same inside and bleed the same color blood?
I tore through all their "adult" novels and made my 4th grade teachers head explode when I did a book report on a James Thurber book which I couldn't possibly of read because it had some "French words" in it.
Because I was allowed to read whatever I wanted, with no one stopping me because "inappropriate for your age", I was able to, God forbid, make up my own fucking mind at a very early age what was appropriate for me. Every child should be given the opportunity to make up their own mind. But they can't do that without unfettered access to all *factual* information.
Yikes..sorry /rant off
