Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the governor of Arkansas. This allows her to appoint new members to the State Library Board. Recently Sanders appointed Jason Rapert who immediately proposed to cut off funding to libraries that were suing the state to block a censorship law. Fortunately, Rapert couldn’t get anyone to second his motion and it died. This gave the 18 plaintiffs – including libraries, patron, and booksellers a win (arkansastimes.com).
Rapert is a former Arkansas senator and founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers that promotes conservative Christian public policies, as well as Holy Ghost Ministries which aims to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ (arkansasadvocate). In 2015, Rapert sponsored an Arkansas law creating a monument to the Ten Commandments that has been on display on Capitol grounds since 2018. Several groups filed federal lawsuits for the removal of the monument, citing the First Amendment clause that prohibits the government from favoring an establishment of religion. These lawsuits have been combined and are moving forward in federal court (arkansasadvocate).
Another Board Member, Pamela Meredith, said defunding would not only hurt the libraries, but also the communities. Such action, Meredith said, “would amount to the board’s taking a stand, a political stand, which is not the panel’s responsibility” (arktimes.com). Rapert replied saying this was not a political statement, but “simply doing good business” (arktimes.com).
Rapert wanted to know if Arkansas libraries contain books that some have found objectionable, such as “Gender Queer.” Rapert chose to focus on books with LGBQT+ themes and not books with extreme violence or steamy heterosexual sex scenes (arktimes.com).
The law, Act 372 would have restrict what book children can access by imposing a criminal penalty on anyone who makes “harmful” books available to minors, and establishing a uniform procedure for people to challenge materials in a library based on “appropriateness” (arkansastimes.com).
Plaintiffs in the case included the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) and the Fayetteville Public Library, argued the law violates the First and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution. In the win, CALS director Nate Coulter said, “The federal court has agreed today with what CALS and our many library friends and supporters have been saying about this law for many months. Act 372 is censorship. Act 372 violates our constitution; Act 372 wrongly maligns innocent librarians” (arkansastimes.com).
Freedom of Speech and of the Press: The First Amendment allows citizens to express and to be exposed to a wide range of opinions and views. It was intended to ensure a free exchange of ideas even if the ideas are unpopular.
annenbergclassroom.org
Very slowly, we are witnessing the erosion of our rights – many given to us by the Constitution. Benjamin Franklin once said, “If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed” (saturdayeveningpost.com).
These are my reflections for today.
March 1, 2024
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I’ll be away next week. 😎☀️