That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

by Amanda Jones

I’d been spending a large portion of the previous weeks pondering why random strangers go online to put down, troll, threaten, and defame people who they’ve never met. Do they wake up and think to themselves, “I wonder who I can ruin today to make myself feel better to fill the hole in my life?” I believe that anyone who does this kind of thing suffers from some type of trauma, or that something elemental is missing from their lives.

My huge crime was speaking out against censorship at my local public library board meeting on Tuesday, July 19, 2022. In retrospect, it was a pretty tame statement, compared with the reaction it elicited.

Tears began rolling down my face. You see, the people commenting weren’t just strangers. They were people I knew. People I grew up with. The hurt was almost more than I could bear that morning.

I was seething. Who laughs at victims of sexual assault? The callousness shown during those testimonies was infuriating, but it goes to show you what type of human beings they are.

Robert Judge allegedly violated open meeting laws in August 2023 when he spearheaded the firing of the library director in an executive session, which prompted a lawsuit and a petition

The American Library Association believes that as many as 97 percent of challenges are not even being documented. America should be alarmed at the thought of books being pulled from shelves because of a few well-organized people with agendas that have more to do with divisive politics than books, education, and libraries.

You start banning one thing, and you’re on a slippery slope to banning everything. We have seen this happen when groups angry at the banning of LGBTQIA+ books challenge the Bible to make a point of the hypocrisy of highlighting portions of a work out of context.

“What [Biden] really wants is for your local second grader to be able to walk into a school library and see graphic cartoon depictions of anal sex. That’s really what Joe Biden wants.” This outright lie by Shapiro also pushes the notion that there are these types of materials in school libraries, particularly at elementaries.

“The librarian’s suit against the parents really, and ironically, attacks the First Amendment rights of the parents to have a voice.” False. Roxana’s lawsuit, like mine, is a defamation suit.

Defense lawyer whose client falsely accused librarian of grooming and being a pedophile

Neither public nor school libraries contain pornography. This is a false narrative told by politicians, keyboard warriors, people seeking to make themselves important by chasing clout, and sometimes well-meaning people swept up in the hysteria.

There are many types of books written about sexual reproduction and sexual health in libraries, some that are even appropriate for elementary-age children and written in language for children to understand. Those books might be found in juvenile nonfiction because they’re written specially for children.