Back in the opening years of the Twenty-First Century when Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern was attempting to ban “Homosexually Themed” books from the state’s public libraries, when her movement began to lose steam and gain opposition she made a proposal to the legislature that public library systems that did not comply with her purge would lose state funding.
Salaries could not be paid, maintenance could not be kept up, utility bills would not get paid, and books would not be able to be purchased until the libraries complied and remove whatever books she chose should be removed.
It has been twenty years, but het mindset is making a comeback, but this time nationally.
In fall of 2022, because librarians refused to ban the book Gender Queer: A Memoir, a novel about the author’s journey with gender identity, voters rejected funding for the Patmos Library in Jamestown Charter Township, Michigan.
The Missouri legislature recently passed a budget that included $4.5 million in funding for public libraries that it originally said a few months ago it was going to cut until the public spoke out in opposition. However, full funding for the state’s libraries is still not guaranteed.
Under the existing Missouri law, images in school materials that could be considered sexually explicit, like depictions of genitals, are prohibited, and librarians and other school officials who violate the law by allowing students to have access to the material would be charged with a misdemeanor and could be fined $2,000 or sentenced to up to a year in jail.
Lawmakers in Llano County, Texas, rather than following a court order to return banned books to the shelves, considered closing public libraries this spring but reconsidered after community protests.
In St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, the St. Tammany, Louiisianna, Library Control Board voted to keep five challenged books on the shelves of the town’s libraries, and US Representative Clay Higgins advocated for libraries to be replaced with “church-owned” alternatives.
“Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding. We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”
After most staff quit due to threats against GLBT employees, a library in Vinton, Iowa, temporarily closed. Residents had complained that GLBT books were on display and there was not enough material on Trump.
The Hamilton East Public Library’s board of trustees in Indiana recently ordered a quarter of a million dollar review of the library’s books to make sure they were “age appropriate” according to the board’s definition.
In March, the Sumner County, Tennessee, Library Board fired a library director after claims of “unkind treatment” toward evangelist Kirk Cameron at a conservative library event.
People are attacking books and we wonder why they burned the Library in Alexandria.
Knowledge is scary and it is easier not to learn and kill off the scary, that learn and find there was nothing actually scary about it.
Books being removed based on claims that they are obscene and pornographic, but there is no definition of those terms in the laws proposed and passed beyond it being up to individuals to complain according to their own opinions while the authorities are bound to act.
And Ben Franklin thought his libraries would be the source of knowledge.
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