That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

by Amanda Jones

One of my biggest frustrations is that the same people who are so hyperfixated on our libraries will allow their own children unfettered access to phones, tablets, and devices where actual pornography is just a click away. If you point that out to them, they don’t deny it. They’ll just scream all the louder about taxes and libraries. I know very few parents who have parental filters on their children’s devices or monitor their usage.

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.

Speaking out against censorship does not equate to the promotion of sexually explicit material or pornography to children. Speaking out against censorship means reiterating library policy and reminding the public that libraries are for everyone and that everyone in the community deserves the right to see themselves in the books at their local library.

teenagers in Louisiana can get married at sixteen, so it stands to reason that they should be able to read about aspects of married life that include sex.

On July 23, 2022, a patron challenged Sarah J. Maas’s wildly popular fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses. I happened to have read this series twice but agree that it moves toward adult content after the first book. The challenger wrote, “Certain scenes in this book seem a bit mature” and asked that it be relocated to the adult fiction section. I agreed with the library’s decision to house the books together in the adult fiction section, even if the first book is young adult.

People are copying lists of “bad” books on websites like BookLooks and social media and then mass challenging the titles without reading them or making their own determinations.

On August 8, 2022, a member of the public challenged the title Let’s Talk About It, saying that “the book has several images of sexual acts” and “it encourages the reader to begin watching pornography and follow their favorite porn stars.” Let’s Talk About It was listed in the library system as being recommended for ages fourteen and up, and it was shelved in teen nonfiction.

After a review, and not just taking one page they saw on the internet, the library determined that it would be appropriate to relocate the book in adult nonfiction.

The book was not removed from the collection but moved within the collection so that readers of a certain age would still have access to the title.

In June 2023, a challenge was submitted for Pride Puppy!, by Robin Stevenson. The publisher describes the book: “A young child and their family are having a wonderful time together celebrating Pride Day: meeting up with Grandma, making new friends and eating ice cream. But then something terrible happens: their dog gets lost in the parade! Luckily, there are lots of people around to help reunite the pup with his family.”

In Louisiana public libraries, we have seen a huge rise in book challenges simply because they contain LGBTQIA+ characters.

This is a huge movement that has been in the works for a while. It is well funded and well coordinated. It is about marginalizing and erasing cultures and groups of people, it is about defunding public institutions, it is about dumbing down society for a more easily led population, and it is about using libraries for political gain.

We all see race, and that’s fine. If we deny someone’s race, we’re denying a part of who they are as a person and not acknowledging the person as a whole, and that can slip into dangerous territory. If we ignore someone’s race, we’re ignoring the different perspectives that they bring.

Hell hath no fury like a librarian scorned.

Are you there Michelle? It’s me, Amanda. It’s excruciatingly tough to go high when the bottom-feeders go so low that they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Now when I think of Florida, I don’t think about it as a vacation spot but as a state that likes to terrorize educators and librarians.

many of my school librarian friends have essentially gone into hiding after being targeted. Educators who were once the face of the most popular sessions at librarian conferences have disappeared for their own safety or the security of their families.

The destruction that lies in the wake of their hate doesn’t seem to matter to the white Christian nationalists.

“Fascism is hungry. So hungry it eventually eats itself.

They are part of a misguided social movement whose leaders know only divide and conquer and the quest for power. The followers understand none of this. The hate they spew creates a compelling group identity. It is emotional, not rational. It gives their lives meaning and a sense that they matter. There are better ways to find meaning,

It’s a contagion, but it’s a contagion that is well organized and fueled by fear and the mistaken notion that turning back the clock will fill the void in people’s lives.

can smile and say I took the higher road, but the higher road is pretty lonely when you discover you’ve lost friends you never really had in the first place.

It’s a schoolyard bullying tactic that most people grow out of after grade school when they mature into adults. These people haven’t gotten the memo.

Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and a whole list of politicians have used the words groomer and indoctrinator to describe teachers and librarians in general. To weaponize that word, and water it down to use against librarians and educators who are anticensorship, is incendiary and harms children who are being abused by real predators.

There would be proof splashed over all of creation if any teachers or librarians were indoctrinating children in our community. There is none because it’s not happening.

Power and influence matter more to them than the actual welfare of human beings.

Librarians love children, but we love all of them and not just a select few like the pro-censors want us to do.

A Grant Parish resident, Daryl Stagg, joined citizens at public library board meetings in Rapides Parish to voice concern over such picture books as Pride Puppy! Not long after, this same man was arrested and charged with three counts each of oral sexual battery, first-degree rape, aggravated crimes against nature, and indecent behavior with a juvenile, according to the Baptist Press.

So, while he was allegedly sexually assaulting children in private, in public his mission was to get a children’s book about a puppy in a Pride parade removed from library shelves—because it was the books that hurt the children.

June 2022, the FBI opened investigations into over a dozen sexual abuse claims in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans. Our Louisiana attorney general and my elected officials have decided that the bigger fish to fry is not sexual abuse, neglect, rates of foster care, and so forth. No, they want to save children by taking away library books.

We don’t need to create a pretend moral panic in Louisiana, or across the nation, when there are actual people harming children, and it’s not the drag queens during story hour.

White Christian nationalists seem to want so badly to imagine that they are oppressed and victims.

If you want to see a group of people who are attacked for their beliefs, look at the rise in antisemitism in our country, and then come back and tell me that it’s Christians who are hated.

What is it with people up in arms about teaching real history? We need to admit wrongdoing before we can move forward, but there’s a faction of the Far Right that will deny slavery was harmful and even say slaves benefited from slavery. Growing up in southern Louisiana, I often heard the excuse, “The slaves weren’t mistreated. They were family.” Black people were owned by white people. It was not okay and they did not benefit. Period, the end.

Our country has some awesome ideals but has a history of not living up to them—of mistreating women, children, people of color, and the LGBTQIA+ community.

It doesn’t seem like the book banners, the alt-right, and the white Christian nationalists are interested in being educated. Education is about knowledge, facts, truth, and what they’re pushing isn’t about these things. What they stand behind is really a belief system, which happens to be profoundly undemocratic and exclusionary.

The alt-right is filled with hate and they need an enemy because they cannot hate themselves.