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.”
I’m in Indiana and my wife is a librarian. They already tried to do this once here and they could certainly try doing it again next session. I’m pretty scared.
Well… if you’d like… consider this an invitation to come to Minnesota. We love our librarians.
Unfortunately, we have two elderly mothers we have to think about. But it may be necessary to move eventually. Thankfully, we’re right on the Illinois border, so maybe she’d find somewhere not too far away if we had to move. Also, she’s worked her way up to a top administrative position, so it would be a good income to have to give up in a bad economy.
Well, hoping for the best… I don’t know your wife, but if she’s anything at all like our librarians, she’s awesome.
I sure think she’s awesome. That’s why I married her! Thanks!
ok, Millennial … look at you over there ::checks notes:: loving the woman you married! What a disgrace!
Seriously though, best of luck through this and hopefully the 1st Amendment is upheld
ETA: Not sure on your age here, was just a joke to play on the boomer ‘wife bad’ stereotype that in my experience is way too accurate.
Thank you. Although we’re both at the very tail end of Gen X, so we didn’t eat avocado toast for breakfast. Maybe that’s why we have a house (in an undesirable place to live that we bought in 2017 when mortgages were reasonable).
I’m a millennial that doesn’t like avocado at all, so, speaking of disgraces!
We managed to get a house, but there are also 3 of us with no kids, I can’t imagine managing with two people in todays economy. We got in just before the rates skyrocketed in 2021, the house price is basically what the inflation calculators say the original owners bought it for decades ago, so, there’s that at least, that we only paid the equivalent of the original list price for a 5-6 decades old house with decades of shoddy repairs such as every single plug with a ground having the ground pin tied to the neutral!
It’s a real rough time out there right now though with ownership out of the realm of possibility for so many :-\
Illinois generally likes their libraries/librarians too. If on the border, it may not be a bad commute either. Hopefully this bs stops soon, though. Not holding my breathe though. Too many idiots out there.
Unfortunately, there’s little tiny towns on the other side of the border unless she wanted to have a 90 minute commute. Which is not 100% not an option considering that was about the length of her commute when we lived in L.A.
But we also moved away from L.A. in part because she was never seeing our baby due to her commute. Even when we were able to move closer to where she worked, it was still a 45 minute commute. Now it’s 15 minutes. On top of that, it’s basically her dream job and she let me work my dream job(s) in the entertainment industry for years in L.A., so I’d hate for her to have to give it up.
There are so many reasons why it’s worth not currently moving. And I say that despite hating this town and not thinking much of Indiana in general. But if she could get arrested just for doing her job? Then we won’t have much of a choice. Honestly, we aren’t entirely ruling out leaving the country because I have dual citizenship with the UK and we believe my brother and I also qualify for German citizenship due to typical German bureaucracy.
We’ll see what happens in the next year or so, I guess.
Most of that sucks. Not the part where she loves her job type stuff though. Once you start going down the IL/IN border things start getting farther apart beyond small communities. Also it is super easy to make changes if it is just 1 or 2ish people, but once you get into relatives with possibly additional needs and sometimes kids with established lives and friend groups that one doesn’t want to disrupt, making changes gets difficult.
Outside of Indiana, the economy is pretty good.
Really? Houses are affordable in California? The majority of people are being paid a wage that keeps up with the cost of living in Pennsylvania?
Because I’m pretty sure that isn’t true.
As someone who was just barely able to afford a 1200sqft house built in the sixties and in need of a good deal of work before interest rates skyrocketed, I can assure you that houses in California are not what most would consider affordable.
They weren’t even affordable when I lived in L.A. 10 years ago.
This may be an unpopular take, but somebody is affording every home that gets bought.
You can make a solid argument that rising rents are immoral, but you can’t make the argument that they signify a weak economy.
That “somebody” is quite often a corporation or a foreign investor.
Illinois would treat you right. Taxes suck if you work out of state but the governor appears to care about individual liberties.
I agree in general, and am thankful there is a law in place to protect librarians now, but I don’t know that Illinois, or rather the part we’re near, would be a huge improvement in terms of the community and what they might try since the closest Illinois town to us is Marshall, followed by Paris and Casey, and they’re not especially big fans of Pritzker. Or Democrats in general. Or individual liberties probably. So it is not as great an option as it could otherwise be. I think the place to work relatively near us would be Champaign, but it would be over a two hour drive to our mothers, who are already a one hour drive away or a 90 minute commute for my wife if we stayed here.