Alabama lawmakers advance bill that could lead to prosecution of librarians

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.”

d00phy,

I love that little sound bite: this isn’t a Republican or Democrat bill. Oh really? Do you have any sponsors from the other side of the aisle? Do you expect any of them to vote for it? Has anyone from your side come out against it? No? Guess what kind of bill it is.

tearsintherain, (edited )
@tearsintherain@leminal.space avatar

Basically North Korea approach to education and information.

Viking_Hippie,

It is not a Democrat bill. It is a Republican bill. It’s a people bigotry bill to try to protect persecute, oppress and just generally punish minority groups, including children, for existing

Fixed it for that fascist

DrPop,

Public libraries should have little to no restrictions on books. Period. We can have all the warnings in the world but information whether it’s false or “dangerous” or doesn’t agree with my political philosophy should be free. They didn’t care about freedom and at this point Alabama should make this a ballot measure.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Public libraries should have little to no restrictions on books. Period.

So, in a private market for literature, public libraries have an enormous impact on who can profit from publication. A big part of this fight isn’t just prosecuting librarians, its controlling who gets to profit from bulk purchase of books.

They didn’t care about freedom and at this point Alabama should make this a ballot measure.

We’ve seen ballot measures functionally ignored in states like Florida and Ohio.

Here’s what some of those cases look like, from successful to unsuccessful efforts to alter the will of the people:

• In November 2023, Ohio voters passed an amendment to their state’s constitution protecting the right to abortion. Within a week, a group of Ohio Republican lawmakers declared the amendment to be invalid and introduced legislation that would strip state courts from having authority to rule on the issue of abortion. Ohio’s House speaker, Republican Jason Stephens, rejected the proposed legislation.

• In July 2018, Washington, D.C., voters approved an increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers. Three months later, the City Council repealed the initiative.

• In 2016, voters in South Dakota supported an initiative to revise campaign finance and lobbying laws and create an ethics commission. Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a law repealing the initiative in February 2017. Another citizen initiative to create an ethics commission was on the ballot in 2018, but did not pass.

Not included in the article, but what always leaps to my mind is the 2018 Florida Felony Disenfranchisement Reform Amendment that was rejected by the state legislature and governor’s office a year later.

RedWeasel,

“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 wonder how much media that would leave. Would that only apply to things that have images/video or would that include descriptions in books? That would include pretty much everything. Could end up like video rental stores where they had the adult section where children weren’t allowed, except the section is the whole building.

MagicShel, (edited )

I’m gleaning in on “gender-oriented conduct.” What isn’t gender-oriented conduct, especially if you go back to less-enlightened eras where shit like a woman being a doctor might be considered gender-subversive?

It goes without saying that the Bible is right out given any test for child-appropriateness. Which I agree with, but I’m not willing to throw out everything else just to get rid of it.

RedWeasel,

So, banning anything about things like being a stay at home parent, secretaries were traditionally at one point, athletics as traditionally women weren’t allowed so can’t talk about that, suffrage, voting rights, etc.

don,

Sounds like we need to advance a bill that could lead to the prosecution of Alabama lawmakers.

zigmus64,

I’d be down…

tacosanonymous,

They have tried this twice in my state too. I think they’ll keep trying until they get us.

Our state Library Association is putting up a good fight but our legislature slides further to the right every passing election cycle.

rayyy,

Welcome to red state’s Idiocracy.

runswithjedi,

Wouldn’t this also include things like child beauty pageants and pop stars? Seems like a vastly overbroad law and violates all kinds of speech.

Kyrgizion,

If the reddest states actually band together and secede from the union, surely the national IQ of the USA jumps into double digits ?

I mean, at what point would it honestly be better to just let them be the fucking cesspool they want to be?

Thorry84,

There’s plenty of good folk living in those states as well. Plus an entire younger generation who wants nothing to do with all those backwards ways and are rejecting religion. It’s just a lot of old folk that want to return to the dark ages.

DrPop,

The problem is these states make themselves so unwelcoming a large portion of these younglings leave to better places. My Illinois town keeps shrinking because we had backwards ass elected officials for the longest time. We had the option to have a metro station added to our town( paid for by the city is StLouis) and we rejected it because homeless people could come here. Well we don’t have the network system so I drove 40 minutes to work and still have a homeless and drug problem.

We also voted out first ever mayor of color( former cop) so things have been getting betterish. But we also have an actual evil rich villain who is now evading the law because he was trafficking drugs and children. This is a current ongoing investigation. I’d rather not doxx my town but last time we made national news our former mayor’s wife was caught doing coke in the local bars during COVID shutdown. He told her not to come home and divorced her ass tho.

Sorry I ranted there, but all those with the means to leave do because not everyone has the capacity to make things better and deal with everything that comes with it.

hondaguy97386,

Someone get a hold of TST and have them go after every church that loans out the bible from the library…

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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.

DrPop,

Illinois would treat you right. Taxes suck if you work out of state but the governor appears to care about individual liberties.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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.

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

Well… if you’d like… consider this an invitation to come to Minnesota. We love our librarians.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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.

RedWeasel,

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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.

RedWeasel,

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.

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

Well, hoping for the best… I don’t know your wife, but if she’s anything at all like our librarians, she’s awesome.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I sure think she’s awesome. That’s why I married her! Thanks!

tjhart85,
tjhart85 avatar

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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).

tjhart85,
tjhart85 avatar

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 :-\

RestrictedAccount,

Outside of Indiana, the economy is pretty good.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

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.

RestrictedAccount,

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

That “somebody” is quite often a corporation or a foreign investor.

nickwitha_k,

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.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

They weren’t even affordable when I lived in L.A. 10 years ago.

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