By CUP Guest Contributor
I remember when I was a mom with little ones. I would have a weekly outing to the library which both myself and my kids enjoyed. We came to know one of the librarians in the children’s section and she knew my kids names as well. We enjoyed the summer programs that allowed my kids to get prizes for reading a certain amount of books and I made sure my friends knew about the programs at the library as well.
My youngest child is now 25, and times have changed. Would I worry about taking my children or grand children to the library now?
Some States Now Will Prosecute School Libraries Over Obscenity
We have all seen the fight parents have made regarding their school libraries. Last year I was relieved to see Indiana, along with Arkansas, pass legislation that would make sure only age appropriate books were available in school libraries. These two states join Tennessee and Oklahoma to prosecute school libraries over obscenity. Of course, media likes to mislabel it as book banning. The books have not been banned and are still available to adults who want them, at least in Indiana. It is up to parents to decide what their child can see and not up to a tax funded entity to provide sexually explicit material that a child may not be ready to read or see!
The Babylon Bee had a recent clip showing a mom of three going through a public library and having her kids cover their eyes so they would not see the questionable material being promoted. That can’t be in our home state now could it? Sadly, I received some information that shows what is happening here in our own Indiana public libraries.
First Amendment Rights Used As Shield To Harm Children
Micah Clark, lobbyist for American Family Association, recently sent the AFA newsletter that was shocking. It seems Indiana’s public libraries are providing books that teach our children all sorts of obscene sexual details. When one woman tried to write an editorial to her paper about the content of a book at her St. Joe County Public library, they refused to print because they couldn’t use the obscene nature of the language as they were a ‘family’ paper. That was her point, why does a family paper refuse to print content that a library is providing to children 14-18?
The book she uses as an example is This Book is Gay and its author explains all sorts of sexual aspects of homosexual sex along with info for minors about Grindr, a hook up site for casual sex. She said, “One cannot capture the severity of a book by simply saying it’s “sexually explicit”. Depending on generation, personal definitions, and exposure, the term can mean many things to different people. But by quoting from the original text, there can be no question as to why Moms and Dads were saying This Book is Gay was beyond what is acceptable for teenagers.”
Moms and Dads were upset and so they brought it to the attention of the library board, but a month later, the board decided to keep the book available to kids. The library employee spoke of their first amendment rights and their celebrating diverse political views, even though obscenity is not the same as political views. We have laws protecting minors from obscenity because it is harmful to their development.
Circumventing Parental Rights
There are countless books in the teen and children sections of various public libraries around the country giving children and adolescents the idea they are not the sex they were born with or that sex, no matter how perverse or disordered is ok. One just has to look at the Indianapolis Public Library Listing (CLICK HERE).
Earlier this year, CUP also staged a prayer rally on the footsteps of the IPL because of a drag queen story hour for preschoolers offered in IPL.
Is this something our libraries should be doing?
Shouldn’t many of these sexual issues be discussed between parents and their children? Parents need to have some control over what information is provided to their children. Many parents work and many kids go to the library after school.
In Carmel Indiana, a very affluent city, the library is right across the street from the high school. A wonderful CUP member went to Carmel Public Library this summer to investigate and check out their materials and here’s what was found either in the children’s or teen’s sections:
Children’s Section
These pictures don’t tell a complete story. Click here to see a broader list of inappropriate books at Carmel Public Library. The undercover CUP member could not check out all the books because many of the inappropriate books were already on reserve.
If a parent feels the need to find a book about gender or homosexuality or even want their child to know about birth control, they should be the ones to provide it. The libraries are paid for by our tax dollars and should provide books that uplift, inspire, and inform children on so many important aspects of life. We want their minds to be filled with various interests like science, history, culture, music and the arts. Sexual content and the discussion of sex, birth control and LBGT topics should be privately discussed. If a parent believes they need a book to help discuss these issues let the adult find the book they want for their child instead of having books promoted and available for our children to see or find.
American Library Association … A Marxist Front to Indoctrinate Children in Every Community
We do not need to wonder why libraries have changed so much in 15 years when we look to the people in charge. The American Library Association (ALA) current president is Emily Drabinski, self-avowed lesbian Marxist, who seems to want to use the libraries as indoctrination centers. Here is one of her tweets during her campaign,
“I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of ALA. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity! “ She also stated, “So many of us find ourselves at the ends of our worlds. The consequences of decades of unchecked climate change, class war, white supremacy, and imperialism have led us here. If we want a world that includes public goods like the library, we must organize our collective power and wield it. The American Library Association offers us a set of tools that can harness our energies and build those capacities.” Her campaign platform was “Equity as action” and she explained “Social and economic justice and racial equity requires that we make a material difference in the lives of library workers and patrons who have for too long been denied power and opportunity on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, national origin, spoken language, and disability.”
Before becoming the President of ALA, she worked as the interim chief librarian and the critical pedagogy librarian at the City University of New York’s Graduate center. “Critical pedagogy” is an educational philosophy that is very similar to “critical race theory”. Both ideologies grew out of “critical theory”, which was developed at The Frankfurt School by Marxists who were trying to understand why Germans had rejected communism. Many members of the Frankfurt school migrated to the US, taking up key positions at leading universities.
She has also edited a series of books on gender and sexuality information. Books in the series include titles such as Queers Online: LGBT Digital Practices in Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians and Feminists Among Us: Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership.
The Federalist reported that Emily Drabinski was caught making several disturbing remarks in a video revealing her true agenda. She believes that being a Marxist “is very much who I am and shapes a lot of how I think about social change.” She thinks her queerness subverts “normal family types” and says that sexually explicit LGBT books are needed in children’s libraries to show “gay people doing gay things.” She labels parents who disagree as “far right, white supremacists, fascists,” and “angry white mob”, and “Christ-fascists”. At a socialist conference in Chicago she called for libraries to be places for “socialist organizing”.
This woman is clearly not child friendly or even friendly to our form of government. Her radical agenda is not what most Americans want for their community centered libraries. This is why we are seeing more drag queen story hours, promotion of sexual content and gender ideology targeted to children, and codification of the leftist social control mechanisms of diversity, equity, and inclusion and Critical Race Theory at libraries. They are not core concerns of the majority of library users but ALA’s political agenda.
If you look at Carmel Public Library’s website under the “About” tab, they have a DEI statement which says,
“The Carmel Clay Public Library is dedicated to making diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority in decision-making for staffing, collections, services, and organizational change.
The library recognizes and affirms the dignity of those it serves and recognizes that every person in the community has something valuable to contribute. The library is committed to providing an environment free from discrimination or harassment regardless of heritage, citizenship, education, race, socioeconomic and housing status, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, abilities, political affiliations, familial status, or military/veteran status.
The library is a space for the community to respectfully listen and learn from each other. The library will continue to work with the Carmel community to help shape a future that is wholly inclusive and accessible.”
What does organizational change mean? Is their discrimination free environment giving them license to promote ideas to children that a majority of us do not want? How are they shaping our community and our children?
The ALA is on record actively tutoring librarians on how to combat the presence of religiously affiliated organizations and to prevent them from using local library spaces and resources. We, our tax dollars, are literally paying for their agenda. State and local library associations use dollars from taxpayer-funded grants that are disbursed through states to pay dues and conference attendance fees to the ALA. Library associations with religious affiliations are using their donors’ and co-religionists’ money for indoctrination. All these associations should sever their ties with ALA. State legislatures should ensure that no taxpayer dollars can be used by these associations to support ALA.
States Should Sever Ties with American Library Association
State Attorney Generals have a role to play in examining the activities of the ALA. The allegations of coordinated attacks on religious-affiliate organizations raise fundamental questions about violations of the First Amendment. The ALA’s ceaseless promotion of obscene materials to children could run afoul of numerous state and federal laws that protect against the proliferation of harmful material. The ALA is an umbrella organization that controls programming and organizational support for state, local, and religious library associations.
ALA is the oldest and largest library association with nearly 50,000 members and coordinating programs at local libraries across America. It seems obvious by what we see and who is in charge that our libraries are intentionally providing certain books to our children, opening them up to sexual exploitation and abuse. They are being used to teach radical ideology as well.
So far 3 states have cut ties with the ALA with 9 more seriously evaluating their ties. Indiana needs to do so as well.
Our senators, representatives and Attorneys General in each state need to hear from you (unless your state has addressed this issue). Our nation’s public libraries are under attack. Those who are in charge of them do not have good intentions for our children or our country as they try to harm our children and enact social change in our communities. Gone are the days when parents can feel safe letting their child look through the books on their own at their public library. Parents must now be vigilant about keeping the innocence of their children.