On Friday, February 6, the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee voted to advance SB 74, an extreme bill to criminalize librarians for sharing books which contain any remotely sexual content or LGBTQ content. SB 74 relies on an outdated legal definition of “sexual conduct,” which includes “homosexuality” among its list of sexually explicit topics. This is vague enough that it could be applied to any content which includes LGBTQ references or characters.

When offered an amendment to remove the term “homosexuality,” from the list of barred topics, the House Judiciary Committee rejected the amendment along party lines– making it clear that targeting and censoring LGBTQ content is a desired impact of the bill. This is blatantly unconstitutional discrimination.

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Not only would this bill be harmful for librarians and Georgia youth, but it’s also a waste of time. Georgia now has one of the worst child literacy rates in the country, yet lawmakers have been so fixated on taking certain books out of libraries that they forgot to make sure our students can even read them. It’s time our lawmakers start focusing on the real issues impacting Georgians’ lives and leave scapegoating LGBTQ people in the past.

Please contact your House Rep NOW and urge them to oppose library censorship!