Why Are All The Young People Leaving, Oklahoma Cries While Outlawing 'Books'

We are sorry, children, for your loss.

The great moral panic over school libraries continues, with an Oklahoma state senator filing a bill that would require public school libraries to remove materials about sexuality within 30 days of a parent's complaint. If the materials aren't removed, the librarian would be fired and banned from working in Oklahoma for two years, and parents could also collect "at least $10,000 per day from school districts if the book is not removed as requested."

Appeals process? What appeals process? The Cultural Marxists have been poisoning kids' minds too long, and the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Rob Standridge, is tired of good decent people not being allowed to just get moral filth and degeneracy out of the schools. The McAlester News explains that Standridge believes current processes for parents to challenge school library materials can end with stuff parents and grandparents don't like still being available for checkout, and how is that even fair?

He said the books being promoted to school children are different than those in bookstores or even his local public library.

A few of the books he said he has concerns about include the “Trans Teen Survival Guide,” “Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities, “A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns,” and “The Art of Drag.”

“I just think that those are overly sexualized,”Standridge said. “I think parents and grandparents, guardians should have a say on whether their kids are exposed to those books. If they want them, they can take (their children) to their local library.”

We've got plenty of questions, but probably our most important is: Who does Standridge think is secretly fapping to  A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns?   

It certainly can't be the salacious illustrations, a sample of which we present here; please hide any small children or easily freaked out state senators who may be in the room with you.  

We hope you survived that.

What distinguishes Standridge's Senate Bill 1142 from the rest of the crop of schoolbook freakouts is that it truly is a good old-fashioned Sex Panic festival, focused on eliminating LGBTQ materials without any of that trendy paranoia about "Critical Race Theory" you might find in other current censorship attempts. Standridge's summary of the bill says it would prohibit public school districts, public charter schools, and public school libraries from

having or promoting books that address the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, gender identity, or books that contain content of a sexual nature that a reasonable parent or legal guardian would want to know about or approve of before their child was exposed to it.

Standridge acknowledged to the McAlester News that the books he'd listed were all about LGBTQ matters, and added that he couldn't think of any "heterosexual books" that would run afoul of the law, although if a high school library had Fifty Shades of Grey on the shelves, his bill would help parents remove it, too.

Also too,

He also said he’s not worried that schools would have to also remove “The Bible,” for example, given that the Old Testament’s “Song of Songs” contains graphic sexual depictions, because he contends that schools don’t have Bibles on library shelves.

You know, we get the feeling that Mr. Standridge just isn't very familiar with either schools or libraries, really.

Besides, he cheerfully explained, before a school could be forced to remove any books, the aggrieved parent would need to sue and take the school to arbitration, and wouldn't that be neat, not that any good arbiter would ever agree with the school:

“Most likely these things will end up in court,” Standridge said. “My guess is the schools won’t comply and the parents will have to seek injunctive relief. That will be up to the trier of fact. They may well disagree with the parent and say reasonable parents would want their children to be exposed to transgender, queer and other sexually-related books. I would doubt that.”

It's not clear whether a lawsuit would also be necessary to get the librarians fired and banned, or for the parents to collect big money from the schools. Standridge's summary sure makes it seem like the firing would be automatic, albeit subject to "due process," while the monetary award would be subject to the outcome of the lawsuit.

Not surprisingly, a lot of your socialist "free speech" types say the proposal is unconstitutional on its face, not that red state legislatures ever worry about such petty concerns. Morgan Allen, director of LGBTQ advocacy group Oklahomans for Equality, emphasized that diverse library materials are important to young folks who may be questioning their sexuality, and that knowing they're not alone may help them feel less isolated. Just having a state senator condemning books that discuss their lives is harmful, she added:

“It’s sending negative messages to our young people, telling them that they can’t be who they are, that they should be ashamed of who they are,” Allen said.

She said 92% of LGBTQ+ teens reported that they hear negative messages in school, which increases suicidal ideation. Bills like this are a “death sentence” to youth, Allen said. She said nearly 1 in 4 Oklahoma LGBTQ+ youth surveyed reported that they had attempted suicide, compared with 7% nationally.

Thankfully, the News neglected to ask Standridge for comment on that point, not that we suspect he'd say something monstrous.

The Oklahoma Library Association said it was "disappointed" by the bill, since state law already allows parents to challenge school materials, but didn't those soon-to-be-fired librarians get the point that unless parents win such challenges, the process is worthless? Also, they probably want to keep their jobs, so selfish.

State Rep. Jacob Rosecrants (D) said the law was an invitation to abuse:

He said he’sconcerned that the measure gives one single parent the sole power to decide whether a library can possess a bookandfears it will be a “slippery slope” that invites chaos because it could impact any book that contains the word “sex.”

Well, yes, of course it would. That's the point. Why do you want underaged students reading sex books, Representative Pervert? Before you know it, you'll be saying that pronouns are useful parts of speech, won't you? Oh look, private parts, parts of speech, you liberals just can't go two minutes without waving your parts around. Disgusting. And to think this was once a free country.

Rosecrants added that in the past, "asinine bills" like SB 1142 wouldn't have had a chance of advancing, which makes us suspect he isn't altogether familiar with the body in which he serves. The Oklahoma lege has, in the recent past, tried to ban hoodies, sought to protect Christmas from whoever's trying to kill it, and attempted to authorize state militias to fight federal law, not to mention the approximately infinity plus a million times the body has attempted to ban abortion.

Oh, also too, in another bill, SB 1141, Standridge wants to ban Oklahoma universities and colleges from requiring any student to take classes about "any form of gender, sexual, or racial diversity, equality, or inclusion curriculum" unless they're actually majoring in a degree program that's "focused on gender, sexual, or racial studies," at least presumably until he figures out how to ban those degree programs too, the end, OPEN THREAD.

[ McAlester News / KFOR.com / Oklahoma state Senate ]

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