The process doesn’t change for council members.
Craig said the committee is not looking at the books Pryor requested to be moved, because they will only evaluate books if a form is filled out. She added the library doesn’t want to set a precedent of allowing people or groups to forgo the library’s process to get books removed.
Even after stating he directly asked for books to be moved, Pryor said at the Sept. 5 meeting that the council had no business making decisions for the library.
“I don’t want anybody to think that County Council is in the business of banning books because it’ll be this today, the Bible tomorrow,” Pryor said. “We’re not in that. We need folks … to go through the entire process, through the library board process.”
Craig said the library will make no changes to how it runs after the opinions most recently expressed by councilmembers, either.
At the Sept. 10 meeting, other members of County Council agreed with what Darby said at the council meeting while also encouraging any concerned residents to follow the library’s process.
Councilwoman Jenny Costa Honeycutt said she had recently taken some training from Darkness to Light — a Charleston-based national nonprofit dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse — and that it shed some light on how content can be used against children.
“The way children are groomed using materials is very intentional, and so I do think we need to be very conscientious,” Honeycutt said.
She later told The Post and Courier the training taught her if children have more knowledge than they should about adult-related subjects, it’s a sign they could be abused.
“My comments were not intended to direct the library in any direction,” Honeycutt said. “My context was more just to say this is about protecting our children.”
Rhonda Newton, CEO of Darkness to Light, said the training is geared toward five steps: learning the facts that surround child abuse, minimizing opportunities for abuse to occur, elevating voices of survivors to help make the subject easier to talk about, recognizing the signs of abuse and being able to react responsibly.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)