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Oklahoma Senate Won’t Defund Inclusive Kids’ CollectionsMembers of the Oklahoma Senate have allowed an April 6 deadline to expire without considering a bill that would have prohibited local funding authorities and library boards from funding their public libraries unless the libraries have “place[d] all children and young adult materials that contain homosexual or sexually explicit subject matter in a special area [and limited] distribution . . . to adults only.” H.B. 2158, which passed the House March 15 by a 60–33 vote, also specified that the state library must withhold funds from noncompliant public libraries.Three days before the state senate deadline, Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) issued a statement urging that the bill be brought to a vote, contending: “Most libraries simply purchase books endorsed by the American Library Association. Many of those books undermine local community standards and I believe most Oklahoma librarians are not aware of the books’ content at the time of purchase.” She went on to cite as proof the scene about oral sex in John Green’s Looking for Alaska, the 2006 winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature given by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association. “The legislature has passed laws regulating what kind of food school vending machines can contain,” Kern asserted. “We should consider the feeding of our children’s minds, hearts, and souls just as important.” Marilyn Hinshaw, who directs the Eastern Oklahoma District Library System headquartered in Muskogee, credited the bill’s failure to advance to “many public librarians in Oklahoma [who] likely were in touch with their legislators at the same time.” Hinshaw told American Libraries she wrote Sen. Stratton Taylor (D-Oklahoma City), who chairs the Appropriations Committee to which H.B. 2158 had been referred, to refute claims being made that similar legislation was pending in other states. Such efforts, she told Taylor, “are local—not statewide—in a particular community or school district and it is about a local policy [private groups] want changed.” Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of the social-conservative legal-aid group Liberty Counsel, disagreed. In an April 3 press release, he said, “Federal, state, and local governments are not required to fund libraries that refuse to implement reasonable protections designed to shield children from books that contain obscene or pornographic language or images.” The release also states that the group “consulted with Rep. Kern regarding the language of H.B. 2158.” Posted April 14, 2006. |
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