14-05-2025
Where does the censorship stop?
()
If you remember visiting the local library as a child, you likely went with your mom or dad, a teacher or with nothing more than your bike and a backpack.
Chances are state lawmakers or religious zealots did not escort you inside, and you didn't have to wonder whose stories were hidden behind locked doors or inside a vault because nothing was locked up.
By 'whose stories,' I refer to those books that reflect the lives of readers who may not often be depicted in literature, much less in a positive manner. So, a Black child who can't read about racial prejudice in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings might blame himself for his own race-based struggles in a white-dominated society. The child who was molested might blame himself until he reads another book often targeted by censors, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Or teenagers questioning their own sexual identity might fear they're the only ones with such a quandary until they read Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer. Kobabe's book was one of numerous books targeted by former state senator Jason Rapert of Conway during his tumultuous time on the Arkansas State Library Board.
Recently, the Arkansas Legislature chose to abolish that board, which wasn't as censorship-prone as many lawmakers apparently wanted, and to have the governor appoint a new panel. As if that weren't bad enough, the legislature later approved a bill requiring librarians in schools with kindergarten through fifth-grade students to 'store non-age-appropriate sexual content … in a locked compartment within a designated area.' The bill defines 'non-age-appropriate sexual content' as 'any materials that include explicit instruction, promotion, or advocacy of sexual ideology, behaviors, or orientations that are not developmentally appropriate for kindergarten through grade five … students.'
The law does not specify who decides what is age-appropriate.
Arkansas' escalating campaign of censorship represents yet another vague, punitive, and politically motivated attempt to chill free expression and intimidate public servants.
– Megan Bailey, communications director, ACLU of Arkansas, referring to Act 917 of 2025
This escalation in the war against libraries and public school teachers came after a federal judge in December struck down challenged provisions of Act 372 of 2023 which sought to criminalize librarians who provided minors with access to inappropriate books.
Part of Act 372 that went unchallenged in court and that became law 'already requires school libraries to place books deemed to be inappropriate in an area inaccessible to students under 18,' said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.
So, why was the lock-'em-up measure, Act 917 of 2025, even needed? Perhaps, for show, for politicians to look tough when it comes to already-denigrated librarians and teachers.
I asked Megan Bailey, communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, about the possibility of the ACLU's suing over Act 917.
'We are currently reviewing all options and are continuing to monitor how this and related laws are enforced,' Bailey replied.
Referring to 'Arkansas' escalating campaign of censorship,' Bailey said Act 917 'represents yet another vague, punitive, and politically motivated attempt to chill free expression and intimidate public servants.'
'While it may appear narrower than Act 372 on its face, the lack of clarity around what constitutes 'developmentally appropriate' content — and the threat of civil lawsuits against libraries and librarians — creates a chilling effect that will likely lead to over-removal of lawful, constitutionally protected materials out of fear of retribution,' Bailey said in an email.
Caldwell-Stone said in an email that, nationally, Act 917 'is unique in that it requires books that are deemed to include 'advocacy of sexual ideology, behaviors, or orientations' not developmentally appropriate for K-5 students to be kept under lock and key, requires parental permission to access such books, and includes provisions for punishing schools and educators who do not comply.'
'In targeting books that address or include themes about gender and sexual orientation, the law may be engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment. Additionally, the parental permission requirement could also be found unconstitutional and a violation of students' rights to access books in the school library,' Caldwell-Stone said.
She noted that in 2003, a federal court ruled against the Cedarville, Arkansas, School Board when the court 'set aside a school board's requirement that students submit a written parental permission slip to access the Harry Potter series.'
'It held having to obtain parental permission to check out the books from the school library constituted a restriction on access that violated the students' First Amendment rights, given that the books had been restricted because school board members 'dislike[d] the ideas contained in those books,'' Caldwell-Stone said.
'Laws that impose ambiguous standards and threaten punishment for subjective violations raise serious First Amendment concerns. Librarians should not have to face punishment for failing to implement vague, content-based restrictions,' she added.
Despite court rulings and astute cautions, books and intellectual freedom have long been targets of the morality police, though I can't remember a time when the far right targeted libraries in Arkansas as much as it has recently.
Censorship was, of course, a hallmark of the late 1940s-50s McCarthy era, and I trust — no, I only hope — that few politicians today yearn to be identified with an era that blacklisted artists and censored books. (Case in point: Ray Bradbury's dystopian 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, in which firefighters burn down any houses that contain outlawed books, was published 'for many years' only in a censored version, according to PEN America, a free-expression advocacy nonprofit.)
Lest you think the ACLU, the ALA and I are overreacting, note that in 1965 the novel Black Beauty was banned in South Africa during that country's apartheid era because of the word 'Black' in the title, according to PEN America.
In the United States, the first book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series became the most often challenged book in libraries from 2000-2009, according to the American Library Association. And the U.S. Naval Academy, responding to President Donald Trump's anti-diversity orders, removed nearly 400 volumes from its library this year.
Where does the censorship stop? Should the Bible be banned because it features stories of polygamy, incest and horrific death? I say no. But if the censors are consistent, they will say yes.
