
Missouri could jail librarians for lending 'age-inappropriate' books - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/16/missouri-could-jail-librarians-for-lending-age-inappropriate-books-parental-oversight-of-public-libraries-bill
======
SamReidHughes
The Guardian Reports: A bill has been proposed by a state congressman from the
bottom left corner of Missouri.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Having actually read the bill:
[https://house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills201/hlrbillspdf/4634H...](https://house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills201/hlrbillspdf/4634H.01I.pdf)

It's clearly trolling for votes. In some ways it's ridiculous.

It could be charitably characterized as a "local control over public
libraries" bill. A reasonable sounding proposition that librarians can't use
their font of tax money to corrupt the vulnerable children, with, I don't
know, whatever it is libraries do to corrupt children. Are they distributing
drag queen pop-up books now?

Disappointingly, unlike what the bill's name implies, there is no requirement
that the board consist of parents.

The election procedure for the board. It's to be held at a regularly scheduled
hearing for your county or whatever jurisdictional unit applies (which the
bill is completely vague about) for whoever bothers to show up.

Rep. Baker is lying (or bad at drafting) when he says “Even the bill specifies
it wouldn’t be taken out of the library, it would just be put in a section
that’s not for children.” The bill says, "Remove from public access to
minors," which really means "remove from public access."

------
downerending
Sounds bad. What would be better?

(Such censorship has always existed behind the scenes. Maybe better if it's on
the record?)

