Missouri House Republicans are upset that the ACLU has filed suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association. The plaintiffs are looking to declare a bill that led to the banning of 300 books in school libraries unconstitutional. Accordingly, Republicans defunded the entire public library system in the state.
Most of the 300 books yanked from the school library shelves had LGBTQ or racial justice themes. But the Republicans didn’t like the idea of being sued and decided to deny any public funds for public libraries and librarians.
Rep. Cody Smith argued that the state should not “subsidize” the lawsuit with public funds. But the Missouri Library Association issued a statement that they are not “providing any funding for this lawsuit, as the ACLU is aiding them pro bono.”
“Library funding is guaranteed in the MO constitution,” the group wrote on Twitter. “This tactic, meant to bully MLA into submission, instead directly harms public libraries who rely on those funds, especially the smaller, more rural libraries.”
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The law that the ACLU is suing to be declared unconstitutional was intended to protect the victims of sexual assault. An amendment was added that bans teachers from “providing sexually explicit material to students.”
The amount of funding each library receives from the state varies, but no library would be immune from defunding or drastic cuts.
“My library would’ve received around $26,000, which is about 20% of our buying budget,” Earnhart said. “We’d either have to find excess funds somewhere … or we’d have to reduce the number of items we can buy.”
Earnhart said her library is lucky to have other funding sources — if the state pulls its funding, it won’t have to close its doors. Libraries in rural areas wouldn’t be as fortunate.
Children can be protected without shutting down hundreds of public libraries. And I’m not sure all 300 of those books violate the letter of the law’s “sexually explicit” stricture. Of course, this is the problem when anyone — right or left — sets themselves up as arbiters of what is “acceptable.” How many of these books are “sexually explicit”? How many need to be hidden from public view?
Provisions in the law that exempt materials of artistic or anthropological significance are clearly being ignored. Students have been barred from checking out works on Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, graphic novel adaptations of classics by Shakespeare and Mark Twain as well as The Gettysburg Address, the Pulitzer-prize winning Maus, and other books about the Holocaust. Districts have banned comics about Batman, X-Men, and Watchmen; The Complete Guide to Drawing & Painting by Reader’s Digest; Women (a book of photographs by Annie Leibovitz); and The Children’s Bible.
In the graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare, I know that the Bard would get red in the face reading what some of these literary butchers have done to his work. But when banning any book from public consumption — like those found at a public library — great care must be taken. That care seems to be lacking in Missouri.
Blaming contemporary white people for the evils of slavery is idiotic and children should not be exposed to such stupidity. But rendering a historically accurate picture of 17th and 18th-century America as well as the treatment by white people of black people since emancipation are lessons that need to be taught. And teaching older children that there are people who see the world differently than we do — that love differently and feel different things than we do — those too are lessons that need to be taught.
And the best way they can be taught is through books — carefully chosen and not willy-nilly tossed in the trash.
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