Dozens of librarians were apprehended in a series of lightning dawn raids around the “Show Me” state for violating the recently passed Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act. The act forbids library employees from providing access to minors of books “deemed to be age-inappropriate sexual material” by five member panels elected by local communities. Although the review boards are not law enforcement agencies, they worked with local police in staging the raids. The librarians face a fine of up to $500 or a year in jail.
Judith Ralls, a member of one panel, claimed that her group had taken down one of the worst offenders, a local librarian who had made a graphic novel about an adolescent girl struggling with her attraction to other girls available to teens in her library. “If these kids read these books and start to realize that there are other kids out there dealing with the same issues, they’re less likely to experience the numbing shame and isolation that can be so fruitful in reducing them to a state of dispirited submission to the social and religious norms approved of by our panels.”
While some critics of the new law argue that it allows a small group of parents to impose their own values on the community and that the library already offers an extraordinary variety of perspectives in its collection, including those of the conservative Christians who promoted and passed the law, members of the boards feel certain that they know precisely what type of materials are appropriate for all the teens of their communities regardless of their varied backgrounds and that their judgement deserves special consideration.
“If this wasn’t the right thing to do, why would Jesus Christ have told me to do it?” Ralls asked.