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.”
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.