I am a librarian in a small Louisiana town. Like many other states that have GOP majority, we currently have multiple bills in our state legislature that would impose ridiculous restrictions on our patrons from checking out materials that contain "sexually explicit content," (which is the current workaround to censor LGBT+ materials). I am also a political junkie, spending way too much of my free time reading and analyzing proposed legislation that would have a direct effect on my profession.
This deserves a longer post but I advise everyone in Louisiana to examine and compare two bills that will certainly pass in their current forms. One bill deals with the ID verification restrictions on online pornography (HB77) while the other (SB7) focus on restricting "sexually explicit material in public libraries." If you look at both bills, both provide a definition of obscene (pornographic) materials. On the surface, they look the same except for one line that appears on the online pornography bill and not on the public library. It's a caveat that "materials, images, videos are not obscene as long as they have literary, artistic, cultural, or scientific value to minors."
Essentially, Louisiana republicans are saying that actual hardcore pornography has less restrictions than public library books, even if the book only describes a sex act. A minor could look at the same images or text online without age verification that they would be restricted from checking out at a library.
And this ignores the fact that their is an insane provision in the online pornography bill that says it only applies to websites that no more than 33.33% of its entire content can be pornography. As one democrat pointed out, that means that a website could be 67% Blues Clues episodes and 33% hardcore pornography and not need age verification.
I do not let my political views affect my work, and I will follow the law, but I can't help but vent about this blatant attempt to censor LGBT+ and sex ed materials. It is clear that our legislatures are not actually conserned about "Grooming" or pornagraphy; they only want to erase LGBT+ from their communities.
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James Bass
Librarian II/Assistant Branch Manager
Lafayette Public Library
He/Him/His
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