Latest vote by Library Board most shocking

What has happened to the adults in St. Tammany Parish who care about our children?
Shockingly, they are apparently hard to find, and that goes all the way to the top of parish government.
At least, that is the only logical conclusion anyone can come to after the absolutely stunning vote at the Library Board meeting on Monday, when four of seven board members—headed by Parish President Mike Cooper—voted against a mild effort to provide a little extra protection so children won’t stumble onto highly pornographic, sexually explicit materials which are available in YOUR publicly funded library system.
(The last statement is still hard to believe—but that’s an entirely different issue. Why were these materials ever purchased in the first place?)
A resolution was proposed by new Board Member Chuck Branton that would instruct library employees to supervise the Adult section, where sexually explicit materials are now being shifted to, even though the aisles are still available for anyone to wander into.
Not only would it have proven the Library Board is doing what it can to keep our kids from being sexualized by these books at young ages, but perhaps more importantly to the majority of parish citizens, it would have been a key move before the upcoming millage renewal for the libraries on March 29. That millage provides 97 percent of funding to operate the 12 branches, and without it, libraries will likely be closed within a year.
A vote in favor of Branton’s resolution would have shown the public that even though the board has not done as much to protect kids as many conservatives would like, the board is still trying to consider the views of most residents in conservative St. Tammany.
But no, that isn’t what happened. Even though Cooper has publicly stated several times in the past two-and-a-half years of this controversy that he believes in “protecting kids” by having some restrictions on access to the books, the parish president cast the deciding vote in a 4-3 tally that rejected Branton’s attempt for library employees to keep an eye on the Adult section so minors wouldn’t walk in there without approval of their parents.
By all accounts it is still hard for this publication to understand who would continue to vote so kids can access these horrendous materials—and yes, they are highly pornographic, detailed stories of sex involving minors doing things most adults would find highly shocking…i.e., teen girl has sex with a monster. And that is just one example.
Still incredible to follow is that the “no” vote came with the future of public libraries in jeopardy! This long-running controversy already has many residents ready to vote against the millage, simply because the St. Tammany libraries receive over $13 million a year from taxpayers—more than any other parish agency when it comes to property taxes.
The resolution by Branton was tame at best. Nobody was banning books. Nobody was saying kids couldn’t get to the books if their parents approved. So, why in the world would adult men and women think a simple vote to add a little protection for kids was something they couldn’t support?
One commentator stated “you have to remember, this is actually a good vs. evil fight we are in.” But what kind of people don’t do all they can to protect kids?
That is the question the vote on Monday answered.