In the 9 years we’ve been doing this, we’ve tried to keep our focus on the local scene. There’s only so many hours in the day and so much sanity your Lady Yokels can expend, but sometimes we do need to expand our geographic purview. Today we need to talk about some legislation that’s made its way to Annapolis. For as Tip O’Neill liked to say, “All politics is local.”
We’ll start with HB0047, which thankfully (for the second time) was voted unfavorably in committee yesterday. However, just because it was shot down a second time, doesn’t mean that these folks won’t keep coming back. Let’s explore the bill together:
That may take a couple of readings to really digest. It’s not only a very discriminatory and nasty bill, it’s also an enormous government overreach! Did you notice that this bill applies not only to public schools, but also to private schools and intramural sports?! Which party is supposedly the party of big government again? It’s so amusing to us how situational some people’s values are!
If you follow our Facebook page, you saw the link to this NY Times article we shared this morning:
The next bill, HB0025 (at least as far as we know as of this morning) has not been voted on just yet. But someone is happy about the prospect of it passing!
Let’s explore the language of this very bad, vague bill!
Who gets to define sexually explicit materials? Cindy? Here’s the rating system that most of these groups are using these days from the website, https://booklooks.org/ratings-system:
We have never had such a hateful reaction to a chart before! Who defines moderate, explicit, excessive, mild, aberrant, obscene?! Who has the right to tell the rest of us what our children should read? Where’s the evidence of harm in a 3-5 rated book? What studies do they have? What the hell is wrong with these people? Man, we don’t like to get all worked up this early in the morning!
At the bottom of this post we are going to give you a nice list so we can all email our local delegation to make sure they don’t vote for this very bad bill should it come before the entire delegation. Let’s divert, for just a moment, on why it’s so important that kids and adults read books:
Maybe we should put forth a bill that everyone has to read at least for an hour a day! That’s probably the best way to fix this problem.
Here’s your list:
https://frederickcountymd.gov/DocumentCenter/View/340074/Frederick-County-Delegation
frederick local yokel 