The Arkansas Advocate’s Tess Vrbin’s reports on the Arkansas House approving a proposed law that could open the door to holding state libraries accountable for obscene content.
The House approved Senate Bill 81, with seven Republicans joining 18 House Democrats in voting against it. One Republican House member who voted against the bill called it “government overreach.”
“I think we might have lost our way down here somewhat. Republicans are supposed to be about local control, and yet here we are again, taking local control away from our counties and cities because of a few bad actors,” Rep. DeAnn Vaught (R-Horatio) said in a speech on the House floor.
According to the Arkansas Advocate article, “Senate Bill 81 would add the loaning of library materials to the statute governing the possession and distribution of obscene material. Arkansas’ definition of obscenity is ‘that to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest,’ with prurient meaning overtly sexual.”
“The bill’s sponsors, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro) and Rep. Justin Gonzales (R-Okolona), have repeatedly said the bill is simply a means of allowing parents more control over what their children read and would not result in the banning of books,” the article noted.
The Advocate said the bill is one of several introduced this year by Republicans with the stated intent of protecting children from sexual content. Other such bills include proposed restrictions on drag performances and which bathrooms transgender adults can use, as well as requiring pornography websites to verify users’ ages.
“I guess the next step is for us to tell parents that they can’t buy phones for their children until they’re 18, because just in case you didn’t know, they can search anything and everything on those things today,” the article quoted Vaught as saying. “Do I think that is good? No, of course I don’t, but we can’t regulate everything in the lives of Arkansans.”
The bill passed with 56 votes from House Republicans, while 11 did not vote and eight voted present.
Click here to read Tess Vrbin’s full article from the Arkansas Advocate.
File image of the Independence County Library
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