Louisiana\u2019s\u00a0attorney general \u2013 a Republican gubernatorial candidate \u2013 is receiving backlash from LGBTQ+ activists after releasing a report recently that they say might silence LGBTQ+ voices in libraries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The brewing fight over censorship in Louisiana\u2019s libraries has opened a new front in the culture war pitting political conservatives and the LGBTQ+ community. Far rightwingers across the US\u00a0tried hundreds of times\u00a0last year alone to ban more than 1,600 books with themes of gender or sexuality from public libraries, schools and universities, saying they wish to protect children from accessing them. But LGBTQ+ activists say there is no evidence that such material is readily available for children without the bans or that it primes minors to be harmed, and they are instead a tactic for conservatives to silence voices which offend their cultural values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To that end, the\u00a0Louisiana\u00a0attorney general Jeff Landry\u2019s Protecting Innocence report from February is calling for state public libraries to bar children from accessing sexually explicit books. He proposes that libraries keep print or digital content with sexual subject matters out of collections intended for children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And his report encourages libraries to create a card system that gives parents or guardians the right to choose if their child can check out sexually explicit content from the young adult section. That means public library directors would be required to get approval from their governing boards to include sexual content in young adult, teen or tween collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Landry said in his report that library resources should cater to \u201cdiverse and inclusive viewpoints\u201d but keep materials in children\u2019s collections age-appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe goal of providing a variety of viewpoints does not require the library to include unrestricted access to sexually explicit materials in collections available to minors,\u201d Landry said in his report, without providing evidence that such access is being provided in the southern state of more than 4.5 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report defines sexual explicitness as any display of masturbation, sadomasochism, touching or caressing of areas like the pubic area or female breast nipple between \u201chumans, animals, or a human and an animal, of the same or opposite sex \u2026\u201d, the stimulation of a genital organ and any other clear sexual acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report maintains that nine books containing descriptions of sexual conduct are allegedly available to children in some Louisiana libraries. One of the titles is Gender Queer, Maia Kobabe\u2019s 2019 autobiography about growing up with a non-binary identity, which drew the most ban attempts in the US last year, according to an American Library Association report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, the report\u2019s list includes five books with gay sexuality themes and four books with hetero sexuality themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Landry proposed that the state commission which approves the sale of tax-exempt bonds to finance public construction could refuse to forgive any debt incurred by libraries which do not comply with the ban urged by the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peyton Rose Michelle, the executive director of LA Trans Advocates and the first transgender woman to be elected to Louisiana\u2019s Democratic state central committee, said that she of course supports protecting minors from accessing sexual content. However, to Michelle, the mission of the report appears to be to justify the removal of material that humanizes LGBTQ+ community members because Landry didn\u2019t supply any proof that there are sexually explicit materials in young readers\u2019 library collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf this were the intention, then I would totally be cooperative and collaborative, and discuss the ways we could do this that are equitable, but those opportunities are not being given,\u201d Michelle said. \u201cThey\u2019re just not sending the signal that this is not about us. I\u2019m getting signals that this is about us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michelle said she did not get the chance to start her gender transition until she was 18 because of her lack of exposure to transgender identities and viewpoints growing up. She fears that censoring certain books will make trans youth feel misunderstood, as she once did, and that could have more harmful consequences than a library having a book containing a consensual love scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[Children] need something to show them that it\u2019s OK for them to be who they are,\u201d Michelle said. \u201cAnd that might be a book.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though the co-founder of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, Lynette Mejia, did not comment to the Guardian, she told\u00a0Nola.com\u00a0in a recent interview that Landry\u2019s report is little more than a \u201cpolitical stunt\u201d because librarians are heavily trained to select appropriate materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[Landry] is pandering to this small group of bigots who want LGBTQ books out of our libraries and he is trying to scare parents into thinking there is something to fear in our public libraries when there is not and never has been,\u201d Mejia said to Nola.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, the US Department of Education\u00a0proposed changes to Title IX\u00a0to protect LGBTQ+ students from sexual orientation and gender identity-based discrimination in schools. But the state education superintendent, Cade Brumley, said that Louisiana schools could ignore the proposed federal expansions because they had not received congressional approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michelle said that Brumley\u2019s position on that matter marked the first step by Louisiana\u2019s government to begin trying to ban books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By December, a member of the library control board for Rapides parish, James Morgan, proposed labeling books with themes of \u201csexual orientation and gender identity\u201d as \u201cunsuitable for \u2026 children and teen collections\u201d. The library for the parish, which is the word Louisiana uses for county, voted to seek a legal opinion from Landry\u2019s office about Morgan\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And shortly afterward, Landry released the Protecting Innocence report. Since then, state senator Heather Cloud has filed\u00a0a bill\u00a0in support of Landry\u2019s efforts to create a library card system and give local library boards rather than librarians the power to decide which materials are sexually explicit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cloud\u2019s bill could be voted on after Louisiana\u2019s legislature begins its annual session on 10 April. The gubernatorial election that Landry is running in is scheduled for the fall. He is seeking to succeed Democrat John Bel Edwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Louisiana\u2019s\u00a0attorney general \u2013 a Republican gubernatorial candidate \u2013 is receiving backlash from LGBTQ+ activists after releasing a report recently that they say might silence LGBTQ+ voices in libraries. The brewing fight over censorship in Louisiana\u2019s libraries has opened a new front in the culture war pitting political conservatives and the LGBTQ+ community. Far rightwingers across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":23178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4836,9951,8299,7024,8348,11941,8241,8924,9214,287,11555,2512,3513,6725,5799,913,11538,9520,10739,423,911,4313,8057,9127,746,12210,12354,3545,6560,2264,11537,2702,11493,10560,2717,9792,6220,7968,11973,6944,8810,6082,7584,6047,1502,5511,9039,6348,5251,3954,5273,594,5140,5784],"class_list":["post-30520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-access","tag-age","tag-animal","tag-animals","tag-ban","tag-bill","tag-breast","tag-chance","tag-child","tag-children","tag-citizens","tag-conservatives","tag-culture","tag-debt","tag-democrat","tag-democratic","tag-digital","tag-discrimination","tag-display","tag-education","tag-election","tag-executive-director","tag-fear","tag-february","tag-feel","tag-female","tag-finance","tag-founder","tag-gay","tag-government","tag-harmful","tag-identity","tag-interview","tag-la","tag-lgbtq","tag-louisiana","tag-love","tag-nine","tag-one","tag-republican","tag-schools","tag-senator","tag-sex","tag-students","tag-tax","tag-transgender","tag-universities","tag-us","tag-war","tag-will","tag-woman","tag-who","tag-young","tag-youth"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}