Bring a gun to a knife fight: In 2022 the Missouri legislature passed a law that made it illegal to provide any student with books containing images “‘showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,’ ‘sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,’ or showing human genitals.” The aim of the law was to put reasonable limits on the kind of material available in school libraries, and was passed in response to the recent nationwide effort by teachers and librarians to include such smut in these places.

A normal person’s response should be, “Gee, why do we need a law? What sane adult would ever give this stuff to kids? Isn’t that why we have a movie rating system?” A normal person would also note that anyone who did want to distribute this kind of porno to kids is really nothing more than a pedophile.

Well, it looks like the Missouri Association of School Librarians, the Missouri Library Association, and the ACLU are all pedophiles, when you get right down to it. These organizations immediately banded together to sue to overturn the law. They want to give kids porno.

On March 28, 2023 the Missouri House responded in turn to these pedophiles by passing a budget that cuts the entire $4.5 million budget for all public libraries. The cut was put forth by the House budget chairman Cody Smith, who said this:

“I don’t think we should subsidize that effort,” Smith said about the cut to money that flows through the budget of Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. “We are going to take out the funding and that is why.”

While this bill still needs to pass the state senate and be signed by the governor, it appears the House legislators are quite serious: You want to give porno to kids the taxpayer is not going to fund you to do it.

This same budget bill also included amendments aimed at cutting any program promoting the leftist and bigoted diversity, equity, or inclusion agenda.

Once again, these amendments are part of a budget that has to be passed by the state senate and signed by the governor. Based on history as well as some comments from some wimpy Republicans, it is unclear if any will survive the rest of the legislative process.

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, said on Twitter Friday morning that the language is “is overly broad and would result in billions of dollars in cuts to hospitals, health care facilities, colleges and universities, and the Missouri House of Representatives itself.”

Rowden’s accusation here is pure bunkum, designed to produce panic in order to kill the measures. These measures will do nothing of the kind, and Rowden knows it.

We shall see if the Missouri House budget survives. Regardless, it is encouraging that some state legislators are finally willing to propose real concrete action — such as cutting budgets — instead of proposing the failure- theater-feel-good laws that Republicans have become known for.