Oklahoma Lawmakers Want Libraries to Limit Access to Objectionable Material
by Allie Martin
March 16, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A proposed bill in the Oklahoma Legislature would require public libraries that receive state funds to remove materials containing sexually explicit content or homosexual themes from general reading areas.
The proposed law easily passed a State House panel last week and now heads to the full House for a vote. The bill would withhold state funds from public libraries that do not put objectionable material in a special place. Steve Crampton, chief counsel with the American Family Association's Center for Law & Policy, says the bill is reasonable.
"All it does is remove [the material] from, basically, an accidental kind of discovery by children that oftentimes are pre-kindergarten in age," says Crampton. "There's just no excuse for allowing kids to access this kind of material in a public library paid for by taxpayer money."
And contrary to what liberal groups might try to portray, says the constitutional legal expert, the bill is not a form of censorship. "The liberal ACLU types are looking at it with that in mind," he suggests, "but I think they may not rush into court."
He points out that the legislation does not call for anything to be removed from the libraries. "Though the easy pot-shot made at it is that it constitutes 'censorship,' the reality is that you're not removing a single book," Crampton says. "All you're doing is putting them into a restricted access section. So I don't know that they would be successful in the event they did raise the challenge."
The bill's sponsor, Representative Sally Kern of Oklahoma City, says she is not trying to censor materials. She explains that she just wants to shield children from language and behaviors they are not mature enough to understand.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
