Jason Rapert, a former state senator and, to his dismay, the only angry male on the Arkansas State Library Board, spent about two hours Friday trying to make the lives of the board’s six other members, all women, miserable.
But the outcome was not what he likely expected: One board member told of her own sexual molestation as a child and said the very books that Rapert opposes can help children recognize sexual abuse and realize they can say, “No”.
Not once echoing the anger of Rapert who looked at her from across the room, that board member, Lupe Peña de Martinez, rather spoke calmly and said, as she has previously, that she had read some of the books which Rapert contends are pornographic.
Peña de Martinez told Rapert and other board members that she has worked in libraries. “I am not lending books to children to harm them,” she said.
Peña de Martinez said she was sexually abused as a child and let Rapert, who had just read a graphic passage aloud from one of the books he opposes, know that the subject isn’t so simple.
Books like these can help children understand what sexual abuse is because they may not already know, Peña de Martinez said. “Groomers, I believe, are those who oppose these books” because “they don’t want to have kids read this and learn this is grooming.”
Those who haven’t experienced such abuse and other hard times, she said, “are speaking from privilege.”
Rapert, a Conway Republican turned Christian nationalist, waged war during much of the meeting against 30 books he contends “national authorities” have labeled pornographic, though he never identified these “authorities” by name despite being asked.
Repeatedly looking at his phone, Rapert referred by name only to two books that he had mentioned a day earlier on his Facebook page —”Gender Queer” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue”.
Both books have transgender themes, which Rapert contends are grooming tools.
“Do you want your taxpayer funds being used to buy books used to sexually groom children into homosexual behavior?” he asked on Facebook on Thursday.
Rapert went on to suggest that the state Legislature could abolish the library board if it didn’t heed his wishes. It was a suggestion he has previously mentioned and did so again at the board meeting Friday.
“This book “Gender Queer” is available and accessible by children in Arkansas. See [it] for yourself and then ask yourself why women on the Arkansas State Library Board [think] this is ok?” Rapert wrote on Facebook.
He followed with a link to the website, Take Back the Classroom, which calls itself “a project of The Parental Rights Council and The Kitchen Table Activist.” (The “national authorities” Rapert cited earlier.)
In his Facebook post, for example, Rapert wrote: “If these board members keep refusing to protect our children, I invite the Arkansas legislature to abolish the Arkansas State Library Board and give the responsibilities directly to the Arkansas Secretary of Education.”
Rapert repeatedly suggested during Friday’s meeting that he wasn’t trying to “ban” books but merely wanted to “segregate” them “to an appropriate space” away from children. (One would think the former senator could have perhaps selected a different, not so historically loaded, verb. Maybe separate? Or, move?)
One by one, not one board member was willing to second Rapert’s motions aimed at “segregating” books, ending Arkansas public libraries relationship with the American Library Association and even cutting funding to libraries that sue the state.
Rapert once again tangled loudly with the only other board member appointed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Shari Bales. The two repeatedly interrupted each other, and Bales repeatedly told Rapert he was trying to get the board to exceed its authority while Rapert indicated she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You don’t know of what you speak,” he said, apparently trying to sound biblical.
Someone might want to remind Rapert, founder of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers and Holy Ghost Ministries, of some pretty eye-popping sex in the Old Testament that might be considered pornographic, too, especially if it is read out of context.
“You are sorely mistaken. I’m a conservative,” Bales asserted to Rapert at one point.
“Conservatives don’t allow porn to be in public schools,” Rapert replied. “I’m not going to sit here and argue like children.”
But of course, he did.
“You need to go back and run for office,” Bales countered.
But he did that back in 2022 and lost his lieutenant governor’s race.
A Republican woman, Leslie Rutledge, won that position.
“You need to go and rant to Dan Sullivan,” Bales continued, referring to the far-right state senator from Jonesboro.
Peña de Martinez reminded Rapert that libraries already have policies in place where members of the public can file complaints about books, which can trigger a library review process. Sometimes, a disagreement is over where a book should be placed in the library and whether minors should have access to it.
Finally, another board member, Pamela Meredith, made perhaps the most important statement of the day. “There is a little thing called the First Amendment,” she said.
Freedom of speech is included in that amendment to the U.S. Constitution, she noted.
Later, Meredith, who was meeting via Zoom, started to speak but in all the commotion lost her “train of thought” and said the meeting could come back to her later.
“Thank you, Lord,” Rapert mumbled.
Suddenly, Meredith remembered.
“I will never vote for any form of censorship,” she said.
“I’ve never voted for censorship either,” Rapert responded.
Only for the segregation of books.