Louisiana Voice

Louisiana is near the bottom in virtually every survey of good things: health, teen pregnancies, poverty, obesity, literacy, environment, crime, overall quality of life.

So, what does our attorney general and announced candidate for governor zero in on? Why dirty books in public libraries, of course.

Jeff Landry has shown little to no interest in the beating death of Ronald Green by Louisiana State Troopers more than three years ago. Neither has he addressed the stabbing death of a state prisoner in the Catahoula Parish jail or the death of a man at the hands of Bogalusa police.

Granted, the first two deaths should have been addressed by the Louisiana Department of Corrections, the proper state agency to take proper action. But they were not. The attorney general is the state’s top legal officer and his silence has been deafening.

Neither has Landry had any public comment on the rash of infant deaths which might have been prevented with proper intervention by the Department of Children and Family Services.

In short, Landry is a political predator who, like a heat-seeking missile, homes in on the hottest political issue certain to keep his name out in front of the public and his eye ever-focused on higher office.

And yes, I know the State Constitution limits the AG as to actions he can legally take but even in those case where he is asked to take part – like the jail rape case in Union Parish and the dispute over a court clerk in Ouachita Parish – he has punted on his responsibility

But if he is restricted in his involvement in local matters like the ones cited above, how is it that he can intervene in a strictly local matter involving parish and school libraries?

A predator generally seeks out the slowest and/or the weakest of a herd and Landry is no different.

He has found a hot-button issue and is exploiting it to the fullest. He has launched a TIP LINE for citizens to report inappropriate content in public and school libraries, a move eerily reminiscent to Texas’s institution of a reward system for reporting anyone who so much a thinks about getting or aiding in an abortion.

His decency quest is no different than the fictional Big Brother of Orwell’s 1984 or the all-to-real US ban of LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVERthat remained in place until it was finally lifted in 1959.

I can remember in the late ‘50s and very early ‘60s when students at Ruston High School found it necessary to smuggle copies of Peyton Place into study hall where they were read surreptitiously by curious students looking for the smut that was, by today’s standards, not really there.

Landry is joined at the hip to Michael Lunsford and his organization, Citizens for a New Louisiana. All one need do is trace their connections to a character named WILL MILLS, III, former finance chairman and treasurer of the Republican Party of Louisiana.

So now, we have Will Mills, III, Jeff Landry, and Michael Lunsford all tied together with a nice little bow via campaign contributions from Mills to both Landry and Lunsford’s organization as well as the Republican Party.

That connection didn’t appear to help Lunsford much a couple of years ago. Members of his own Republican Party didn’t seem to care much for him when he received only 27 PERCENT OF THE VOTE, losing his Louisiana Republican State Central Committee seat in the process. He explained his decisive loss by saying, “God is calling me to fully embrace the non-partisan government transparency work I’ve become passionate about…” Comments on Twitter about his loss weren’t very kind.

About the only thing he seems to have become “passionate” about is going from library to library throughout the state in an attempt to ferret out books he finds objectionable. The local librarians must wonder about his propensity to dive into these publications wherever he lights down, be it Lafayette, Livingston, Caddo, or St. Tammany, to name just a few of the parishes where he has force fed his own brand of morality while devouring the naughty books.

The real question is not whether or not books containing sexual content should be moved to another part of the library. The ultimate goal is their removal, make no mistake about that. It doesn’t matter how loudly they deny this, censorship is the central issue here.

And if they’re successful in that endeavor, what might be next? Obviously, LGBQT rights are in their crosshairs but beyond that, lie other issues like women’s rights, minimum wage, civil rights, voter eligibility, and workers’ benefits.

Women’s right to choose has already come under attack and actually defeated in many states. But what about women’s right to equal pay for equal work? That is already an issue with women getting about 60 cents on the dollar compared to men doing the same job, but there is loud opposition to bringing about equality for women – if they’re even allowed to continue in the work force at all.

Just look at the organized opposition by Republicans to increasing the minimum wage. And already, Republicans are making noise about increasing the voting age after younger voters gave them an ass-whupping in the mid-terms.

If you think Lunsford and his ilk are going to stop at objectionable books, you’re only fooling yourself. That’s just the opening salvo in the coming war over basic liberties. They are convinced, perhaps correctly, that if they just chip away a little at a time, no one will mount serious resistance.

I’m reminded of the poem FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE JEWS.

Landry and his fellow Republicans like John Kennedy et al, insist that more restrictive gun laws will do little to reduce the number of mass shootings at churches and schools across the US. Because of their skepticism about the effectiveness of gun laws and their devotion to the Second Amendment (bought and paid for by the NRA), they adamantly oppose any laws restricting access to assault weapons.

Yet…yet, they have no hesitancy in enacting laws restricting abortion and now Landry is calling for laws restricting access to objectional literature for fear that it might cause children to become gay and everyone know that gays and transgenders pose an ever-present threat to the safety of toddlers.

Bull crap! More children have been molested by individual evangelical members of the clergy, sick, demented family members, and mass shooters than by all the gay and transgender persons combined.

Likewise, it might be wise if Landry and Lunsford considered who spouts the loudest racist, antisemitic online rhetoric, gays and transgenders or the RABID EVANGELICAL RIGHT.

Perhaps Landry might wish to set up a tip line for that garbage. Of course not; it’s not a vote-getter.

And predators don’t prey on their own kind.