West Virginia House Gonna Put Those Obscene Teachers And Librarians IN JAIL
Think of the children, etc., etc.
In an 85-12 vote, the West Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill that would amend its 1931 obscenity code to authorize felony charges and $25,000 fines for librarians, museum curators and teachers who intentionally display “obscene matter” to minors.
What is “obscene matter”? Why, anything an average person believes “depicts or describes sexually explicit conduct, nudity, sex or certain bodily functions.” Sound vague? That’s the point!
Would a diagram of lady parts in a textbook count? A graphic novel about fully clothed and accessorized vampires who are lesbians in love? Twilight? A cartoon spokesbear attending to the hygiene of his bodily functions in the woods? And would you wanna risk jail to find out, given how smart the average citizen of West Virginia is, and knowing that half of them are dumber than that?
The bill is a victory for a small-but-vocal WVA group, the Mid-Ohio Valley Citizens Action Coalition, who marched into their local police station with four titles that they deemed obscene last July, demanding that police go arrest somebody. When that didn’t happen, they pleaded with their state delegate to save the children from this porn!
Republican Delegate Brandon Steele rode to the rescue! That he even listened to these fruitcakes for one second is a credit to a national “parents’ rights” push, primarily led by “grassroots organization” Moms for Liberty, AKA the Proud Boys women’s auxiliary, which emerged in Broward County, Florida, (where else?) in January of 2021, seemingly fully formed from the mind of Zeus.
The Proud Boys’ brand was rather tarnished after January 6, after more than a dozen of its members got arrested. But for right-wing groups that are chapter-based and dwelling in basements in multiple states, it was only a small setback. “The plan of attack if you want to make change is to get involved at the local level,” PB Jeremy Bertino told the New York Times, announcing a new quiet push to take over school boards and local governments.
Dudes who strung up a noose for Mike Pence and crapped in the Capitol are a hard sell to school board voters, however. So the PBs and their far-right “western civilization” promoting “frens” pivoted to hiding behind the skirts of the M4L ladies, and started doing their culture warrior-ing by harassing school boards, librarians and drag shows and anyone who will listen with the old “won’t somebody please think of the children?!” arguments.
The Gippers lapped it up. Within weeks of M4L’s formation, it was featured on The Rush Limbaugh Show and Breitbart, within months it was getting millions in donations from nonprofits like the Heritage Foundation, and in a year founder Bridget Ziegler was standing by Florida Governor Rhonda Sandtits as he signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill M4L had lobbied for. M4L now has about 103,000 members in 285 chapters in 44 states, including in Kanawha County, WV, near the state capital.
Bridget’s husband Christian, former Florida state GOP chair, crowed in 2021 that he’d “been trying for a dozen years to get 20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me!” It’s like a Cinderella tale, but without that disgusting shoe fetish!
Even getting labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center did nothing to damper GOP enthusiasm for M4L and book bans, as they’re quite hate-curious themselves.
“When they mentioned this was a terrorist organization, I said, ‘Well then count me a Mom for Liberty!’” Nikki Haley cheered last June from the stage of the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia.
Since then, though, the ban-brand has taken some hits. Last November, M4L-endorsed candidates got a drubbing in school board elections. Recently even Ron DeSantis has been trying to find the guy who made these crazy book bans, and asking the Florida legislature to amend his own law to limit the number of books people can challenge, because it was starting to get a little embarrassing as counties like Escambia removed encyclopedias and dictionaries for being too sexy.
Still, the push for book bans has been overall pretty successful, with 3,362 instances in 2022. That’s a lot of smut! And M4L continues to run candidates for school boards, though now their list of endorsements is secret, and candidates don’t like to name-check them any more, either. Their wholesome image got a bit tarnished after an Indiana chapter published a Hitler quote in its newsletter, which its founders defended before trying to walk it back a day later, a “both sides” fan dance they learned at Daddy Trump’s knee.
And, of course, co-founder Bridget’s husband Christian — again, the former Florida GOP chair — was accused of filming himself raping her lesbian lover.
The Moms know stuff like this gives the normies the ick, and that their brand of moral-scold hypocrisy, racism and anti-Semitism is not so easy of a sell. But who could disagree with “parent’s rights?” Who are you to say that “being a mom” isn’t enough of a primary qualification for a school board? (Looking at you, Bethany Mandel, Clarice Schillinger.)
What are you, some kind of elitist?
Regarding a post below. Years ago I received notification from my kids' school that they would be taking a survey of the students on drug use. The survey would be administered every couple of years and would be used to track the relationship between admitted drug used and grades.
I lost my shit.
I met with the principal and told him that the school could not give consent for students to participated in a study. Consent had to be given by the parent and even that is overridden if the child decides to withhold consent.
He didn't know that. He countered that they surveys were anonymous. I asked him how they could be anonymous if they were tracking students over time and matching to grades.
He hadn't thought of that.
I withheld consent. My point? By and large, school principals are not sufficiently trained to do the job and/or are lazy idiots.
Hello, all. Longtime listener, first-time caller.
I'm a librarian in Wood County, West Virginia. I am a native West Virginian, and I was born and raised here in Wood County. The following statements are my own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or opinions of my employer.
The MOVCAC is a local "non-partisan" group that seems suspiciously MAGA friendly, to the surprise of no one. I'm not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but if you go to their website you'll see that they want everyone who might want to come to their meetings to be aware of the times and dates of their meetings that they hold almost exclusively at local churches. So, you know, feel free to pass that information on to anyone who might be interested.
Anyway, these nutters started up their holy crusade against the library in October 2022. I'm sure that it was a coincidence that all of it started up about a month before our levy was up for renewal. (It had narrowly failed during the primary.) A couple of them showed up to the library board meeting literally thrusting images from "Gender Queer" in the faces of everyone in attendance. Later on, they showed up to a planning meeting of the city council, who then threatened to censure the library. The censure resolution was set to be voted on at the next council meeting.
The night of the meeting the MOVCAC lined up across the street in front of the library with their signs about protecting children before heading down to the city building. If you want to speak in front of city council, you have to get on the list first. My boss (the director) wanted to speak so I put his name on the list since it was filling up fast with people who support us.
The braintrust from the MOVCAC had t-shirts made up with panels of the "obscene content" from "Gender Queer" and several of their supporters WERE WEARING THESE SHIRTS IN THE CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS. Gotta save the children from seeing the things on these shirts we wear in public!
Since they'd all been goofing off with their protest before the meeting, very few of them managed to get on the list to speak. I don't remember the exact numbers (it's been over a year ago), but of the first twenty or so speakers, only a couple of them were fash friendly. (One of them was some incoherent analogy from a preacher's daughter about not feeding steak to babies.) When council announced that the allotted time for public comment was over, the peanut galley erupted in anger, so council granted more time for public comment...which only meant that more supporters got to speak, with one or two more from their side thrown into the mix. There were vocal protests about how unfair this process was to them, naturally.
It was when council announced that they'd withdrawn their motion to censure the library that things really went nuts. It's like what I would imagine it would have been like to be in the audience at a taping of "The Jerry Springer Show." Along with the shouting, one woman walked up and tossed one of the t-shirts onto the dais to cheers and applause. The presiding member asked a police officer that she be removed from chambers, but they all filed out before that was necessary. As a parting shot, some old guy with them proclaimed "PERVERTS AND PEDOPHILES" on his way out the door.
A couple of weeks later, the library levy passed successfully with more support than we've had before.
When all of this started back then, the MOVCC message was "We're not trying to ban books! We're just trying to protect kids!" Now they want to toss teachers, librarians, and museum workers in jail because someone might see a boob. Just a general reminder that fascists are never, ever arguing in good faith.
There was another effort last year which would have banned "obscene material" ANYWHERE within a square mile of a school. This was pushed by State Senator/local extremist Mike Azinger, who was proud enough of attending the J6 rally that he posted a photo on Facebook of him there with his teenage sons. (No evidence he went onto the Capitol grounds, though. Lots of us were looking, believe me.)
None of us are sure what might happen next. Will the bill pass the Senate? Will the governor sign it? If it becomes law, will any county prosecutors be willing to enforce it?