Louisiana Voice

There’s one thing you can always count on with Jeff Landry. He knows how to detect which way the parade is going and to jump out in front and shout, “Follow me!”

Landry is just your typical political opportunist who hasn’t had an original thought since he was potty-trained.

He wasn’t the one who initiated Trump’s Stop the Steal mantra, but he certainly jumped into the fray when it became obvious that was where the MAGA crowd was headed.

And now that he’s picked up on the hysteria over book content for the kiddies and the censorship that’s sure to follow, he’s once again leading the charge from behind.

It wasn’t enough to establish an attorney general’s “protecting minors” hotline to take complaints about librarians and teachers. Now he wants to establish controls on library cards for kids to prevent those under the age of 18 from having access to sexually explicit materials in libraries.

Wow, Jeffy boy, that’s going to rule out a lot of classic literature. The Grapes of Wrath comes to mind almost immediately. So does To Kill a Mockingbird, and, of course, The Holy Bible.

If you’re really actually read it, you have to admit that the Bible is probably one of the most sexually explicit pieces of literature in existence. Where else are you going to read about two sisters raping their father? Or two different fathers, on different occasions, offering their virgin daughters to gangs of men for sex so long as they leave the male guests, who the men originally wanted, alone? There’s also the story of a man having sex with his daughter-in-law who he mistook for a prostitute. Or how about a man raping his sister or another man marrying his sister, or (gasp!) the suggestion in the Bible that David and Jonathan were gay lovers? So, it would appear, were Ruth and Naomi. And let’s not forget about a couple of references in the Good Book about men having sex with animals. It’s all in there as are other lurid stories, but common decency prevents me from being any more descriptive than I already have been. After all, I wouldn’t want Mr. Landry to flag this site for inappropriate content.

How do you propose to handle that knotty little problem, Mr. AG/Governor wannabe? The good Christian right-wing evangelicals who are backing your little political grandstanding ploy aren’t going to be too happy if you ban the Bible or insist that no one under the age of 18 be given access to it.

I think Lynette Majia, co-founder of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, nailed it when she described Landry’s call for restrictions on what minors can check out of public libraries as “just another political stunt.”

And taking this latest windmill tilting by Landry a bit further, I’ve yet to see or hear of him suggesting that access to cellphones or computers by minors be restricted in any way. Talk about inappropriate content! And if he thinks for one nano-second that Louisiana’s new law can block access to porn by teens and pre-teens, then I have a practically new 1974 AMC Gremlin to sell him.