Debra Hale-Shelton of the Arkansas Times reported on a battle over censorship on the State Library Board. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed two new members to the board. One of them—Jason Rupert— proposed to cut off funding to libraries that were suing the state to block a censorship law. But other members of the State Library Board voted him down, including Governor Sanders’ other pick.
A former state Senator, Rapert is founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and Holy Ghost Ministries.
Hale-Shelton writes:
Please give the women, especially those who respect the First Amendment, a round of applause.
I refer to the women on the Arkansas State Library Board — even Shari Bales, the one recently appointed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Thanks to them, former state senator Jason Rapert did not get a second on a motion today to defund libraries pushing back against a new state censorship law.
Today was the first meeting of the seven-member State Library Board since Sanders appointed Rapert and Bales. As expected, Rapert talked more than any other board member, tapping his foot on the floor much of the time. His motion was to suspend funds to any library suing the state or Arkansas taxpayers pending the outcome of litigation.
Libraries that would have been immediately affected include the Central Arkansas Library System, the Fayetteville Public Library and the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library. They are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the new state law, Act 372, which seeks to impose criminal penalties on librarians or others who make supposedly “harmful” materials available to minors. The challenged portions of the law are on hold pending a bench trial, set to begin Oct. 15 at the earliest.
To keep funding those libraries amounts to writing them a check to help pay for the lawsuit, Rapert said.
Other members of the board pointed out that defunding the libraries would hurt their communities.
Later in the meeting, Rapert wanted to know if Arkansas libraries contain certain books that some have found objectionable, such as “Gender Queer.”Not surprisingly, Rapert chose to focus on books with LGBQT+ themes and not those with extreme violence or steamy heterosexual sex scenes. Arkansas State Library Director Jennifer Chilcoat suggested that he email her details of his request.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
So, is Rapert one of the many in-the-closet Repugnican gay bashers?
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Last weekend, my daughter was invited to a college to celebrate acceptance into a program in a meal that included many of the deans of the various departments. This was a couple of hours of standing around and eating snacks (hors dourves? some French word, I think) and talking. I noticed there was one guy who was mostly standing alone and introduced myself. He turned out to be the dean of the media/journalism school.
This man suggested that it was difficult to find students familiar with the five freedoms mentioned in the first amendment. We discussed the decline in the type of instruction that emphasized this type of idea. I, of course, blamed this on testing, a premise he accepted as though it was not strange to his discussions. What he did not have was an answer to the problem of the erosion of journalism as a profession. Nor do I.
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