Former Arkansas Senator Jason Rapert Photo: Screenshot
Jason Rapert, a Christian nationalist who Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed to the state’s library board late last year, has complained that other board members who don’t support the drive to keep LGBTQ+ books, or what he calls “pornography” and “obscene” materials, out of local schools and libraries should be “tarred and feathered.” In fact, he has said the state library board should be abolished altogether.
“I serve on the Arkansas State Library Board,” Lapert said. said In his most recent episode Save the Country He said on air: “I can’t have other board members insist on stopping obscene content in the library. It’s ridiculous. I’ve made motions to try and stop it.”
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“The Bible says, ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,'” he said. “If we have leaders who are preventing the nation from receiving God’s blessings, they are not acting godly and they need to be replaced, removed, removed from office and replaced with people who will act godly. We have schools that allow homosexual and LGBTQ material to be used to sexualize children. … We need people to sue those who allow this in our school districts and libraries.”
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Lapert uses the word “groom” becauseA planned, step-by-step process by which someone gains the trust of children and their families in order to sexually abuse them. Anti-LGBTQ+ people often accuse queer people and their allies of “training children,” yet these accusers never ally with organizations that actually fight child sexual abuse, nor do they publicly comment on the thousands of actual cases of child sexual abuse that continue to occur in Christian churches.
While Rapert and other Republican politicians claim the book bans are meant to stop children from accessing “sexually explicit” material, the authors of the books targeted by these bans are almost always women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, according to free speech organization PEN America. About 30% of the titles banned in the 2022-2023 school year included characters of color or discussions of race or racism, and another 30% included LGBTQ+ characters or themes, the organization added.
“If you can’t protect America’s children, you’re not fit to serve in public office,” he continued. “If you can’t protect children, you’re not fit to serve on a committee, you’re not fit to serve in a state legislature, you’re not fit to hold public office at any level. When you’re so confused and so totally disgusted that you can’t make the decision to leave obscenity and porn alone, [away from] Children, you have lost your usual loving sanity and need replacements. You need to be removed.”
“Removed” can mean “removed from position,” but it is also a euphemism for “killed or murdered.”
“Some people say, ‘Oh, he’s talking about violence.’ No, he’s not talking about violence,” Rupert argued. “You should be thrown against an iron fence, maybe tarred and feathered. In America, they used to tar these people and feather them. Remove them, teach them a lesson, put them out of work.”
The expression “rail someone” means to run someone out of town. It also refers to a form of mob punishment that was common in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. In this punishment, the offender was made to sit on a wooden plank or “rail” held up by carriers and then paraded through the community. The offender was publicly mocked, attacked, and sometimes literally tarred and feathered before being dumped by the side of the road. This punishment was intended to publicly humiliate, isolate, and socially ostracize the individual.
Tarring and feathering can mean harshly criticizing or punishing someone, but they are also a form of vigilante public torture that originated in America to intimidate British tax collectors. They were frequently used by Christian nationalist white supremacists against educators, Black Americans, and their supporters in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the toxic tar used in this punishment is not necessarily hot, it can still cause severe physical injury, poisoning, illness, and death.
Even if Rapert was using violent language figuratively, his rhetoric overlaps with that of other Republicans and Christian nationalists who have used dehumanizing language while calling for metaphorical attacks and murder of political opponents.
“It takes a very long time to bring in new directors. [the Arkansas State Library Board]Rupert continued: “[that]If I were a member of the Legislature, I would introduce a bill to abolish and reorganize the Arkansas State Library Board, perhaps even putting new people on the board or just asking them to resign if they are not up to the task.”
In an interview later this year, Rapert promised to implement a law known as Act 372, which would criminally prosecute librarians and booksellers who refuse to remove books deemed “harmful to minors,” a vague phrase often used by anti-LGBTQ+ activists to ban books that reference sexual orientation or gender identity. The law also makes it easier for individuals to challenge a book, effectively removing it from shelves while it undergoes review by library, county, or city officials.
After numerous libraries, bookstores, associations, readers, and patrons filed suit, a U.S. district court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law on July 29, 2023. The plaintiffs argued that the law is poorly written and vague, and violates readers’ and authors’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to access and distribute unpopular content without unjustified government interference.
Still, Rapert has said he will use his new position to deny federal and state funding to libraries that joined the successful lawsuit to block the law, including the Fayetteville Public Library, the Eureka Springs Carnegie Library, the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), and likely the various libraries whose librarians joined the lawsuit. These institutions serve hundreds of thousands of readers across the state.
