“This bill is a 10th Amendment bill putting the control back into the hands of the parents in our communities,” Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker (R) told Breitbart News. “The bill would give oversight through a parental review board to make determinations of what should be available to children.”

THIS ISSUE ISN’T GOING AWAY.
PRAY THROUGH THE IFA PRAYER RESOURCE:
TRANSGENDERING OUR KIDS.

View Comments (3)

House Bill 2044, titled the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act, would require Missouri libraries that receive taxpayer funding to create a parent review board, composed of five elected parents from each local community, that would oversee sexual material for children, including LGBTQ presentations, such as the Drag Queen Story Hours.

The bill has drawn an organized protest from LGBTQ rights groups and library officials. LGBTQ supporters are advertising a protest on March 7 at the Missouri state capitol in Jefferson City.

The headline of LGBTQ Nation’s “news” story about the bill read, “Missouri Republican Wants to Jail Librarians Who Allow Drag Queens to Read Books to Kids.”

NBC News’s story, headlined “Missouri Lawmaker Proposes Bill Criminalizing Public Libraries’ Drag Queen Story Hours,” featured Shira Berkowitz, communications manager for Missouri LGBTQ advocacy group PROMO, who said the legislation was “just based on fear.”

“The oppositional spin is that these [events] are supposedly dangerous in a religious context, or dangerous because LGBTQ people are sexualized,” Berkowitz said. “Right-wing media spinning a reading experience for children into something sexual is what is creating bills like this.”

“I think what [Baker] gets wrong is that libraries are creating a very safe space for children to be read to, in a gentle environment and in a very playful and whimsical way,” Berkowitz added. “They’re not encroaching on any kind of sexual content.”

“There has been pushback (as to be expected) by the LGBTQ movement and Drag Queen groups,” Baker said. “Many are taking false headlines and disseminating that information without reading the bill. The American Library Association and its policies are to blame as well for pushing the Drag Queen Story Hours and age-inappropriate themes in our Libraries through content and events.”

Baker also tweeted several weeks ago that, as a result of his legislation, he has received death threats.

Concerns about safety at the Drag Queen Story Hour events, promoted by the American Library Association, made headlines last year when pro-family organization Houston MassResistance discovered drag queen Alberto Garza, who uses the name Tatiana Mala-Nina when reading to young children, had been convicted in 2008 of sexually assaulting an eight-year-old boy. The Houston library system had failed to perform a background check on Garza or any of the other drag queens appearing in its programs.