Librarians Could Be Jailed and Fined Under a Proposed Censorship Law

[TexasTowelie]

A bill pending in Missouri’s legislature takes aim at libraries and librarians who are making “age-inappropriate sexual material” available to children.

The measure, championed by Ben Baker, a Republican lawmaker, calls for establishing review boards who would determine whether materials in libraries contain or promote “nudity, sexuality, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse.” In addition, the boards, which would be comprised of parents, would root out materials lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Librarians who defy the review boards by buying and lending such materials would be subject to misdemeanor charges, fines upward of US$500, and a potential jail sentence up to one year.

As a librarian, and now as an educator who teaches aspiring librarians, I see this bill as the latest chapter in a long history of books being banned from public and school libraries.

Read more: https://www.towleroad.com/2020/02/librarians-censorship-law/

[safeinOhio]

1. Where is the burn pile?

You can’t be serious.

[The Genealogist]

5. Have you been to Missouri?

Sounds like par for the course to this Missourian. Always some kind of authoritarian bullcrap masquerading as "family values." The main fear is that people will learn that other people whose lives are different from their own have value, too.

[Cartoonist]

2. Put the Bible on the list.

Nudity, incest, sadomasochistic torture, it's all there.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. "Chaucer!" "Rabelais!" "Balzac!"

[dhill926]

8. Hah! Perfect....

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Why can't people be free to make their own choices? Because

Republicans can't mind their own business.

[Freedomofspeech]

6. As a high school librarian I would always celebrate Banned Book Week...

I would display all the banned books I had in the library. One year I had a school board member's daughter pose with the display for an article in the local newspaper. He was not thrilled.

[murielm99]

7. This would not be the first time

such a law has been proposed. Libraries need to have circulation policies and boards who will back them up.

Also, the ALA will help. They try to keep libraries appraised of such laws and how to fight them.

They give a free speech award. Frank Zappa is one of the prominent winners of that award.