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Louisiana Nixes Anti-Gay Literature ResolutionLawmakers in Louisiana defeated May 24 a nonbinding resolution that called for public libraries to make access adults-only for “age-inappropriate materials that are publicly cataloged.”The Committee on Municipal, Parochial, and Cultural Affairs voted 4–3 against House Concurrent Resolution 119, despite the fact that its sponsor, Rep. A. G. Crowe (R-Slidell), had gotten language removed that specified gay-themed materials. He introduced the resolution a week after the parents of a 4-year-old told him that their daughter had borrowed the prince-marries-prince picture book King and King from the St. Tammany Parish Library branch in Slidell. “I’m not asking for censorship,” Crowe told the committee. “I want to raise the bar of awareness and not micromanage the libraries.” Charlene Cain, who chairs the Louisiana Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, countered, “I would not want someone telling my child what to read,” according to the May 26 New Orleans Times-Picayune. Children’s access to King and King in libraries created a royal stir nationwide this spring. Some two weeks before Crowe’s resolution was defeated, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) introduced the Parental Empowerment Act of 2005 in response to a constituent’s objection to her 7-year-old borrowing the book from the school library. H.R. 2295 obliges each state to require that parental watchdog councils oversee acquisitions for every school system or forfeit its federal funding from the Education Department. On May 20, the Oklahoma House approved 81–3 a resolution worded similarly to Crowe’s. The sponsor, Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City), subsequently vowed to try enforcing the nonbinding resolution by withholding state funding from public libraries that don’t relocate “homosexually themed books and other age-inappropriate material to areas exclusively for adult access and distribution.” However, Kern relented after Rep. Tad Jones (R-Claremore) promised lawmakers would study the issue in the next legislative session, the Associated Press reported May 26. Posted June 3, 2005. |
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