Show & Tell: Legal Threats Against Missouri Library LGBTQ+ Story Time

Forgive our IMAGINED presser in a world that's much more FABOOSH than ours. 

Nevertheless . . . 

Agree or disagree . . . This is a really important LEGAL BREAKDOWN of the sitch that shows us . . .

This debate is REALLY about upcoming legal crackdowns and now the rules currently on the books. 

Check-it . . .  

The local prosecutor Hanaway copied on her letter to the library had already explained where the legal line lies. Roger Johnson, the Boone County prosecutor, told KOMU it is not a crime to talk about LGBTQ+ issues. The state laws concern depictions of sexual activity, not gender identity.

Told of the prosecutor’s view at the press conference, Hoskins responded that by that logic, “pornography is OK to be talked about because it’s a First Amendment right.”

If the story time is legal, he said, he will work with the legislature “to ensure this is illegal in the future.”

Politicians propose restrictions on legal conduct all the time. That’s not the notable part. The sequence is.

An attorney general’s warning, a secretary of state’s threat to the library’s funding and repeated accusations of grooming and criminality — all without anyone identifying conduct that violated the laws they invoked.

Tuesday’s press conference wasn’t an announcement that the library had violated the law. It was an announcement that officials wanted the law to prohibit what the library had done.

And rewriting the statute would not necessarily settle the matter. If government funding were withheld because officials objected to the viewpoint expressed in the library’s programming, that would raise a separate First Amendment question.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

MOIndie: What Missouri officials didn’t explain about an LGBTQ+ library story time