Republicans who control the Missouri House have passed a budget that doesn’t give its public libraries a single cent of state money. The lawmakers were angered that the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association had the temerity to challenge a law Missouri lawmakers passed last year removing certain material deemed too sexually explicit from school libraries.
By definition, a law requiring certain books to be removed from shelves is a book ban.
According to a March 24 report from The Kansas City Star, Missouri state Rep. Cody Smith said of those groups, “They are seeking to overturn that law that was unanimously supported by the House. I don’t think we should subsidize that.” Nevermind the fact that the two library associations say the ACLU of Missouri has been representing them pro bono.
In defending a budget that denies public libraries state funding and last year’s law, Republican state Rep. Dirk Deaton tried to put a fig leaf on what is a naked embrace of censorship: “It’s been said this is a book ban. This is not that. It is protecting innocent children.”
By definition, a law requiring certain books to be removed from shelves is a book ban.
The conservative determination to ban books with content conservatives don’t like has been awful enough to observe. As a recent report from the news site Coda points out, librarians in Missouri are terrified that Senate Bill 775, a 2022 law targeting “explicit sexual material” in libraries could lead to their being charged with distributing pornography to children simply for doing their jobs.
But Republicans voting to completely withdraw state support from public libraries? Threatening to imprison librarians for doing what librarians do? Last year’s law and this year’s budget proposal represent an escalation in the party’s authoritarian commitment to punish dissent and keep the public ignorant.
There’s a chance that this particular battle against books won’t…
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