by Guy Page
I’d like to take a minute to talk about Vermont Senate Bill 220, a bill that would, one press report says, and I quote, “protect patrons ages 12 and up from having their library records disclosed to parents or guardians against their will.
Hmmm…. Protect 12-year-old library patrons from their parents?
I understand the argument made by Senate Education Chair Brian Campion (D-Bennington) – that children struggling with sexual identity will seek information more confidently if they know the library won’t rat them out to their parents. What if the kids are reading every book in the library about school shootings? Or they’re non-stop binging on books about teens who want to kill themselves? Don’t parents need to know that? Why should the Legislature and our libraries come between them and their children?
We all want to protect children. Protect them from drug and alcohol addiction. From mental illness. From too much time spent with the electronic babysitters of mass media and the internet. From pre-adolescent sexualization online and in real life.
They need our protection from bullies on the bus, on the playground, in the classroom and on the internet.
But what children don’t need is the library protecting them from their parents.
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Categories: Just A Minute!
Doesn’t everyone know that the kid can just read the book there and not check it out? This is culture war bs and both sides should focus on making the state affordable.
As usual, you dissemble.
Some books are age restricted. Reading at the library doesn’t equate with checking out a book.
Vermont is quite an affordable state. Who are you and what are you about?
Re: “Vermont is quite an affordable state.”
Not for those of us who pay taxes.
Program and indoctrinate that’s the game plan, Parents better wake up before your kids are ruined for life with a twisted liberal ideology !!
This is a patently weak argument that shouldn’t even be entertained. Parents have every right to discuss a child’s sexuality with them and even a moral obligation to.
Librarians? What authority or relational integrity to “protect” children do they have?
They deal with books and periodicals. They have ZERO specific skills or investment into anyone’s child. Their role is a best to be a provider of safe and age appropriate material and even warn parents if they suspect a child needs accountability.
This is incrementalism and crypto-grooming. The goal is to establish an age of consent and transfer responsibility to minors via government and away from parents. This legislator and any librarians who support this should lose their jobs.
I can’t imagine anyone telling my parents back in the day, that not only did they lose any rights as to what I could be taught once I was inside of the school,
but that they don’t even need to know about it. Yup, that would have gone over big ! What the hey is wrong with parents these days ? Is it some kind of “hands off” parenting that they somehow think is for the best of their children, or is it just a feeling that teachers and school boards know better than parents, and a “whatever I don’t know can’t hurt them” attitude ? Pitiful !