Louisiana Voice

Well, the lines appear to be clearly drawn, in Livingston Parish at least, over the ongoing battle over the availability of objectional literature at our libraries and so far, it’s really no contest.

A bunch of quacks, or self-appointed guardians of the moral of our youth, if you will, have taken it upon themselves to dictate morals to the rest of us heathens, sinners, and otherwise lost souls.

But those would-be censors made a big mistake. Well, two mistakes, actually. First, they turned their crusade into a personal vendetta against a middle school librarian and second, they picked on the wrong librarian.

Facebook posts by a Livingston Parish resident named Ryan Thames got nasty and then the nutcases picked up the attack and things got even nastier. Thames accused librarian Amanda Jones of trying to entice kindergarten children to the gay lifestyle and then came the smug announcement that her school had caught fire and part of it destroyed after being hit by lightning.

Jones is a middle school librarian and thus, has no contact with kindergarten children and that school? Well, that was the junior high school a couple of miles to the north of Jones’s school.

But I’ve already related that information, so I won’t beat the subject to death.

What I do want to do, however, is discuss the respective GoFundMe campaigns of Jones and Thames, the latter being one of the defendants in her defamation lawsuit she’s filed (Michael Lunsford and his Citizens for a New Louisiana are the other defendants).

Jones set as her goal $75,000 to finance her legal bills. Without being specific as to the amount raised, suffice it to say that she has easily surpassed that goal already because people opposed to censorship are, well…sane, levelheaded supporters of free expression.

Thames set as his goal $50,000 as a defense fund. To date, he’s raised a whopping $5,075, or roughly 10 percent of the total because again, people generally support the principles behind the First Amendment.

Jones’s GoFundMe campaign says, “No one should be attacked for standing up for their community or speaking out against censorship.”

I couldn’t agree more. Because, you see, that’s all she did. She appeared at a public meeting on her own time and spoke out against censorship. The result was she was immediately cast as a pariah, someone who would poison the minds of our children.

Just for defending the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

“This GoFundMe campaign is raising money to help school librarian Amanda Jones cover legal fees as she pursues protection against those who have been slandering her name after she spoke out against censorship at her local public library board meeting,” her GoFundMe page continued.  “Educators and librarians across the country are being attacked by groups taking aim at books with LGBTQ+ content and materials related to sex education for teens. This is what happened to Amanda, and she is taking a legal stand on behalf of educators.

“This could happen to any of us, and we have to take a stand.

“Give up a cup of coffee for a day and donate $5.

“Amanda has given so much of her time and energy to library and education communities. She deserves our support. Let’s show the world that librarians stick together and stand up for what is right.”

Here’s the kicker:

“Any money raised over what is needed to cover Amanda’s legal fees will be donated to EveryLibrary to continue the fight to protect others,” the online post says.

And there are others all over the map, to be sure. Efforts are underway in Lafayette Parish, Caddo Parish, and in Texas to censor libraries and to dictate to the pubic what is appropriate for intellectual consumption.

You can go HERE to see some of the contributors to Thames.

Now to boldly go where no smart man would dare go in Livingston Parish: If Thames, Lunsford, and Citizens for a New Louisiana are really serious about protecting innocent children from literature chock full of sex and unspeakable violence, they might be wise to shield the little darlings from exposure to a book called The Holy Bible.

Whoa. I said it. That’s sure to bring out the zealots with the pitchforks and torches.

But it’s true. For example, here’s a little verse from Second Kings, Chapter 18, verse 27: “Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?”

It’s right there, in the King James Version.

And what about incest? The Good Book’s full of it, beginning in Genesis. If Adam and Eve were the first humans, how do you think their children reproduced? With their parents? Siblings?

And then there was Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. They were sole survivors of the flood, so how did their children’s children propagate the species? With their parents? Grandparents? Siblings? Had to be some incest going on there somewhere, sometime.

But then, incest was fairly common in the Bible. Also in Genesis, two angels first visit Lot and the neighbors come calling, wanting to have homosexual relations with the angels. Instead, Lot offers them his two virgin daughters. We’re not told if they take him up on his offer but later, after Lot and his daughters flee Sodom and hide in a cave, the two daughters get him drunk and have sex with him in order to become pregnant. How sick is that? And we’re going to let little children be exposed to that? Why, gosh-darn-it, there are Bibles placed in the backs of pews in every church in Livingston Parish just inviting little eyes to fall upon such graphic stories.

Other mentions of incest can also be found in the books of Second Chronicles, Second Samuel, Exodus, and Amos.

Then we have Abraham, Jesus Christ’s ancestor, who impregnated both his wife and his servant – after the age of 90 yet!

And look at David. He sent Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to die in battle so as to cover up his getting Bathsheba pregnant.

There are numerous instances of gruesome beheadings in the Bible, including that of JOHN THE BAPTIST on the whim of Herodias, who, by the way, was married to her own uncle (more incest). The impetus for his beheading was a dance performed by Herodias’s daughter Salome (which could explain why Baptists are supposedly opposed to dancing).

Speaking of killing people, the Bible is jam-packed with murder of all kinds, beginning with Cain killing his brother Abel. And God was the perpetrator of much of it: the flood, where he killed everyone but Noah and his family; Sodom and Gomorrah, where he killed everyone but Lot and his two oversexed daughters and continuing in Exodus where he brought a plague upon Egypt and killed the first-born of every Egyptian family. Seriously, God? Innocent babies?

Looks like Lunsford, Thames, and Citizens for a New Louisiana have their work cut out for them in cleaning up all the dirty literature in all those churches.

And trust me, they aren’t about to stop there. Anything about the Holocaust and civil rights will be in their crosshairs next. You can book that.

Better get busy, guys. You’re burning daylight.