Just for your clarification, in case you’re wondering if your State Senator voted to pass a bill that would throw librarians in the county jail if someone checked out a book that someone else thought had naughty words in them, the vote to amend the measure, stripping out the language that would have sent your local librarian arrested & fingerprinted, and instead created an appeal process for obscenity determinations and placing it under civil jurisdiction, as opposed to a criminal court of law. Here’s how it shook out:
And the roll being called: Yeas 18, Nays 16, Excused 1, Absent 0
Yeas: Crabtree, Davis, Deibert, Duhamel, Hulse, Kolbeck (Steve), Larson, Mehlhaff, Miskimins, Otten, Reed, Rohl, Sauder, Schoenfish, Smith, Vilhauer, Wheeler, and Zikmund
Nays: Beal, Blanc, Carley, Grove, Hohn, Howard, Jensen (Kevin), Karr, Lapka, Marty, Nelson, Perry, Peterson (Sue), Pischke, Voight, and Voita
Excused: Foster
You can read that here. (page 16)
The send the librarians to jail list included President Pro Temp Carr, Assistant Majority Leader Carl Perry, And Majority Whips Kevin Jensen, Sue Peterson & Tom Pischke. You can also add California Carley, Taffy Howard, Lauren Nelson, and End-time army member Mykala Voita, among others who joined the attack on people just trying to do their job.
Not a good sign when Majority Leader Jim Mehlhaff and Majority Whip Randy Deibert were the only members of leadership who wanted to bring sanity back into the discussion.
What do you do with a legislature when so many people assume evil intent and want to brand their local librarians as criminals, guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor? And want them to suffer the same penalties as simple assault, stalking or first-degree petty theft. Just for doing the job they were hired to do, checking out books.
This has not been a legislative session to celebrate or to cheer about. It has literally been a non-stop parade of some of the worst legislation in years, and the only victories have been trying to keep as much raw sewage dammed up as possible. This should really be a wake up call for people to get involved and engaged in politics.
Because if you don’t, this is what you get.
This bill has been misrepresented many times. It requires that a librarian who “knowingly” gives pornographic material to a student be just as culpable as if she/he did so outside of their work environment. I’ve seen much of this pornography that’s in our school libraries, and it has absolutely no business being there. I would be for firing anyone who purchased these books and made them available to our students.
Are you volunteering to don a pointy white hat and become the First Grand Wizard of the BBB (Book Banning Brigade)?
Start by removing and burning all of those European art history books with reclining nudes. Then move on to kids’ books about stranger danger with descriptions of body parts that need to be off limits to strangers.
False. It’s not pornography. It is obscene which is defined by what the population thinks is acceptable. That is a slippery slope.