Christian Nationalist Jason Rapert thwarted in attempt to block funds for public libraries

The newest member of the Arkansas State Library Board tried to punish libraries by invoking a recently passed obscenity law

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Jason Rapert, a Christian Nationalist who has served in various levels of power in Arkansas, recently attempted to block state funds from going to three large library systems. Thankfully, he was outnumbered by his more sensible colleagues.

Jason Rapert (screenshot via YouTube)

If his name isn’t familiar, here’s a crash course: Rapert served as a state senator in Arkansas for 12 years, helping push through ultra-conservative legislation. He also (infamously) installed a Ten Commandments monument outside the Capitol in 2017—inspiring legal challenges that continue to this day. In 2022, he chose to give up his seat to run for lieutenant governor… only to get crushed in the GOP primary. (I guess God played a joke on him.)

Since then, Rapert has spent most of his time running a group called the “National Association of Christian Lawmakers,” bringing together fellow theocrats to promote fictional histories about the supposed faith-based founding of our country and encourage them to file pro-Christian legislation in their respective states.

But late last year, he returned to the political arena.

In November, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed Rapert to the Arkansas State Library Board, a relatively unknown group that controls some of the funding that goes to libraries across the state. By putting him on the seven-member board, the writing on the wall was clear: This would be a new way for conservatives to fight their insane culture war battles.

The group meets every three months, and Rapert’s first meeting last week showed that he was an obedient foot soldier.

That’s because one of his first acts was to propose blocking funding for three giant library systems that sued the state last year after legislators passed what amounted to an obscenity law.

Act 372 of 2023 was passed to keep harmful content out of the hands of children… though, importantly, what counted as harmful was never properly defined. It also punished librarians who allowed kids to check out those books. But critics rightly argued this amounted to censorship and a judge prevented the law from going into effect. A trial is set to begin later this year.

Still, Rapert argued that three of the 18 plaintiffs in the case—the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), the Fayetteville Public Library, and the Eureka Springs Public Library—should be barred from receiving any public dollars until the case is resolved.

The good news is that the other six members of the board, including the other person Sanders appointed alongside Rapert, refused to let those libraries become pawns in Rapert’s game:

“We basically are just writing a check to their attorneys for the litigation,” said Rapert, a Republican who represented Conway in the state Senate from 2011 to 2023. “I’m simply saying that most anyone in here would find it objectionable.”

Board member Pam Meridith of Cherokee Village said she opposed Rapert’s motion.

“If we did withhold funds, that would not only hurt the library as a building or as an agency, but it would hurt the entire community,” she said. “…[Additionally], we would be taking a political stand, and I don’t believe that is our cause here.”

Rapert got no support for his motion, so it quickly died. Eventually, the board unanimously approved giving the state funds to all eligible libraries. That included over $200,000 to the library systems in question.

While that is extremely good news since libraries provide all kinds of important services for communities, and withholding any funding amounts to punishing the people who use those services the most, Rapert isn’t about to stop here. He’s hell-bent on making sure kids can’t access books that discuss sex, LGBTQ topics, or mature topics. The way the Arkansas law is written, though, the way for librarians to avoid punishment would likely be to remove those books from the reach of adults, too.

None of that seemed to bother Rapert, who believes he ought to be the arbiter of what books kids should be allowed to read:

Rapert claimed the books he finds objectionable are “targeting” and “lying” to children.

“We have people that say, ‘We don’t know whether we’re little girls or little boys.’ That’s a lie,” he said. “We have people that say it’s okay to have books about rape and explicit sex in front of young children. That’s a lie.”

If Rapert wants to prevent kids from reading books that include depictions of rape and sex, then he should start with the Bible and vow to go after every pastor in the state. But of course he won’t because his religion always gets an exception. It’s everyone else who has to suffer because he’s too immature to handle tough topics.

Later in the same meeting, he asked that all libraries be surveyed to see if they possessed certain “objectionable” books. While that request was granted, Rapert didn’t explain what he planned to do if they had certain books, though he implied he would try to take some sort of action like calling for the books to be moved to adult-only areas of the library. (On the list of “objectionable” books? Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson.) The Arkansas Times noted that Rapert “chose to focus on books with LGBQT+  themes and not those with extreme violence or steamy heterosexual sex scenes.”

For now, the other members of the board have stopped him from using his position to harm public libraries. But you can bet Gov. Sanders, always eager to fight culture wars instead of helping people, will do all she can to remove the wiser members of that board and replace them with Rapert clones.

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