Somehow the statement in the headline is too much for the Left in Louisiana and everywhere else, including Sara Cline of the Associated Press. Cline’s writeup of the passage through the House Education Committee of SB 7, a bill by Sen. Heather Cloud endorsed by Attorney General Jeff Landry which would impose a movie-style rating system on books in public libraries containing sexually explicit material makes that pretty clear.

This isn’t a very controversial bill. Not in Louisiana. It’s sailing through the legislature so far, passing the Senate on a 27-11 vote. In yesterday’s House Education Committee it passed on an 8-3 vote – the three “no” votes being the three black Democrats on the committee (Patrick Jefferson, Ken Brass and Tammy Phelps).

Most people get this. Surveys show a sizable majority of Louisiana’s population understands that sexually explicit books about queer lifestyles are still sexually explicit books, and the folks want them treated as sexually explicit books.

But here’s how Cline wrote up the passage of the bill through committee yesterday…

Activists in Louisiana are voicing concerns over a bill advancing through the GOP-controlled Legislature to restrict children and teens’ access to public library books deemed “sexually explicit,” saying the proposal could be used to target LGBTQ+ content.

Around the country this year, lawmakers have debated banning gender-affirming care for minors, restricting bathroom access of transgender students and determining what shouldn’t be discussed in school curriculums. Now, legislators are facing questions about what material should be accessible in public and school libraries, often focusing on books with LGBTQ+ themes.

Louisiana’ s bill, which advanced out of a legislative committee Tuesday and is headed to the full House for debate and possible final passage, would require public libraries to create a card system that would prevent children from checking out “sexually explicit material” unless they have parental approval. Additionally, the bill would allow parents to bring books they feel are inappropriate to a local board for review of the material.

“Activists” aren’t really defined, though what showed up at the hearing on the bill was a gaggle of far-left cultural aggressors demanding special privileges for the queer agenda in libraries – that and the librarians who insisted the bill is a solution to a nonexistent problem.

We’re noticing this more and more every time there are Republicans attempting to fight off the cultural aggressions of the Left, particularly in a legislative context. First they swear up and down that the harm being addressed is not happening, and when they lose that argument they next claim that the harm isn’t a harm at all but a social good the evil conservatives are seeking to deprive society of.

Here’s where the AP’s writeup really gets fun…

Republicans argue that legislation limiting access to certain content is not meant to target the queer community, but rather to protect children from accessing inappropriate material and strengthening parental rights. Across the aisle, however, opponents say this is another attack on the LGBTQ+ community’s existence and that it addresses an issue that is not an immediate problem and could result in censorship.

From Florida to North Dakota, bills seeking to ban certain books or limit minors’ access to the material are being debated.

In Florida, Iowa and Indiana, lawmakers have passed bills that would require school libraries to publish a searchable list of books where individuals can then challenge specific titles, making it easier to censor certain materials. In North Dakota, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, recently signed a bill into law that would bar explicit materials from the children’s sections of local and school libraries.

A recent study by The American Library Association found that books with LGBTQ+ themes remain the most likely targets of bans or attempted bans. Similarly, after Landry launched a statewide tip line in Louisiana last year — to field complaints about librarians, teachers, and school and library personnel — he released a report that listed nine books his office considers “sexually explicit” or inappropriate for children. Seven have LGBTQ+ storylines.

“What we discovered in those libraries were graphic illustrations of young adults engaging in sexual activities, detailed descriptions of young adults engaging in sexual acts, books that discuss how to perform said deeds,” Landry said, calling those “very disturbing things.”

Librarians, across the state have repeatedly said that graphic sexual materials are not in children’s sections, but rather shelved in adult areas of the building. Additionally, they say that public libraries already have “policies in place to safeguard children from sexually explicit material” and that every library has a system in which community members can challenge or file concerns about a book.

“I’ve been disheartened to see people in our state paint an inaccurate portrait of and disinformation about our state’s libraries,” said Amanda Jones, president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians. “We have never had an issue with our libraries until they started being used for political gain.”

This is so utterly disingenuous it isn’t even funny. First of all, until five minutes ago it was no secret at all that the librarians across the country were all aboard the woke train and actively promoting all of the LGBTQXYZ agenda that they could.

Drag Queen Story Hour wasn’t a hallucination, after all. It showed up in libraries all over the country.

Including in Louisiana, something Amanda Jones doesn’t bother to mention when she accuses Cloud and Landry of “politicizing” the libraries.

And the shell game being played here is somehow that gay porn isn’t porn. That so long as a book has a queer theme, the sexually-explicit material in it isn’t central to the book and it’s somehow discriminatory to force it into the adult section.

“We never had an issue” with sexually-explicit books when they were all about straight sex, because people understood that constituted porn, so it was relegated to the appropriate place. The issue is the shell game.

None of this matters all that much, because when SB 7 goes to the House floor it’s going to pass with more than 70 votes and the state’s Democrat governor John Bel Edwards, who is finally getting faced with some difficult decisions on whether to walk the walk on this supposed conservatism he pretends to espouse, is likely wasting his time trying to veto it. There will be votes to override that veto.

The guess is Edwards won’t veto the bill. What he will do, in all likelihood, is screech about how Republicans like Heather Cloud are trashing school libraries and burning books for no reason other than to look virtuous.

And this is a lie.

Conservatives are not on offense with respect to this issue. We’re on defense. We’re demanding that gay porn not be included in the children’s section of public libraries because gay porn has been found there. And all the gaslighting aside, we’re going to get what we came for.

Because at the end of the day, the groomers and cultural aggressors on the Left are the fringe. They’re the people in a tiny minority, regardless of what power they might hold over the cultural institutions in this country.

And Heather Cloud’s bill is not a controversial bill. It’s a widely popular bill, no matter what Sara Cline might write about it.