Let’s be clear about what I am about to discuss. As a journalist, a writer, an author, a parent, grandparent and great-grandparent, and a long-time library board member, I will not let someone else, particularly a government official, dictate what is appropriate for me to read, to think, or to speak. Nor will I allow someone else, government official or private citizen, to tell me I do not have the right to decide what is appropriate reading material for my family.
It appears our latest Secretary of State has assumed the odious role his predecessor took on as a censor for our libraries.
Denny Hoskins has decided he has the authority to take state funding away from the Columbia Public Library because it has books in it that he doesn’t like and furthermore tells people it has them, taking it upon himself to decide that some members of the public who want to go to the public library should not make their own decisions about what they or their children can read.
Hoskkins had a fit recently when he learned the Columbia Public Library was going to have a “rainbow story time” for families who wanted to participate. Josh Hancock of The Missouri independent reported library staff read books called “Rainbowsaurus” and “Big Wig” to the children and their parents. The first book is about a rainbow-dinosaur. The other book is, says Josh, “about a child who wins a costume contest in drag.”
The library spent all of $26 for a wig and contact paper for the event. Eighteen dollars went for the wig. Hoskins wants to withhold thousands of dollars in state library aid because the event was held.
Hoskins heard about it before the event and warned the library that it would lose all of its state and federal aid if it held the $26 event for people to willingly attend.
Then when the library, where like all libraries the freedom to read, to think, to learn, and to form one of the most dangerous things allowed in a Democracy—ideas—are cherished held the event anyway, Hoskins and State Senator Rick Brattin threw together a news conference to announce punishment for the library’s refusal to follow their dictates.
Brattin is hoping to be a Congressman in one of the gerrymandered districts he and other legislative Trumpians drew up to protect the political interests of a president who is only interested in libraries in terms of a potential library that will preserve his greatness, and his surplus Qatar 747 that is costing a billion dollars to convert to presidential transportation.
“Unconscionable if not criminal,” Hoskins called the event. It was, he said, an effort to groom children.
Groom children? It’s a pejorative that has become popular on the Right, defined by the Cleveland Clinic as the “process of manipulation and abuse {that} can stem from what may initially seem to be an innocent relationship with a stranger or adult authority figure.”
A story time at a public library designed to foster “manipulation and abuse of children?”
These two justified their outburst with a letter from Attorney General Catherine Hanaway. But the Independent story said that Hanaway “acknowledged the library’s right to determine its own programming and said she was prepared to act only if a program broke the law.”
It doesn’t break the law, which talks about giving pornography to minors or making a public display of sexually explicit material in public.
It’s quite a leap for these self-righteous officials to declare a rainbow-colored dinosaur is pornographic or a cheap wig as sexually explicit material.
Apparently Hoskins and Brattin have superior thoughts of such evaluations. Brattin complained the books had “a message that’s meant to sexualize” and advocated a “lifestyle” that would weaken the defenses of the children.
We wonder how the parents feel about being categorized as enablers of such behavior..
Boone County Prosecutor Roger Johnson told Columbia TV station KOMU that talking about LGBTQ+ issues is not a crime. Hoskins admitted at the ;press conference that “pornography is OK to be talked about because it’s a First Amendment right.”
The Independent says neither he nor Brattin could identify any laws that had been broken but Hoskins vowed that he would ask future legislatures “to ensure that this is illegal in the future.”
First Amendment to the contrary, of course.
One of the all-time great science fiction books is Ray Bradury’s dystopian novel about book-burning, Fahrenheit 451. Midway through story, one of those who burn books is confronted by one of those who memorizes them before they can be destroyed—
The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.
—Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Sometimes books do indeed “remind us what asses and fools we are.”