A lot of states are now starting to cut ties with the American Library Association, which is utterly appropriate considering that the ALA is now a Left-wing interest group like so many of our public institutions.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is going after the ALA. Lee said their goal is to sexualize children and minors with sexually explicit material and then hide this content from parents.
The Washington Post reported:
When it was his turn to question witnesses, he called up a video of Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. In a Zoom call, Caldwell-Stone had been recorded arguing that book advocates should “reframe” the book challenges. This debate should not center on whether titles are sexually inappropriate for minors, Caldwell-Stone said. It should be about “diverse materials … that are about … everybody’s right to see themselves and their families reflected” on bookshelves. … The American Library Association is facing a partisan firefight unlike anything in its almost 150-year history.
The Left does something unbelievably terrible and provocative. But if you notice, you’re the one starting a “firefight.”
The Post continued:
The once-uncontroversial organization, which says it is the world’s largest and oldest library association and which provides funding, training and tools to most of the country’s 123,000 libraries, has become entangled in the education culture wars — the raging debates over what and how to teach about race, sex and gender — culminating in Tuesday’s senatorial name-check.
Like Lee, politicians and parents on the right increasingly paint the association, known as the ALA, as a defender of pornographic literature for children — tying their allegations into a broader conservative movement that asserts school libraries are filled with sexually explicit, inappropriate texts. (A 2022 tweet in which the organization’s president called herself “a Marxist lesbian” added to concerns.)
Hmm. So the problem is not that the ALA’s president calls herself a Marxist lesbian; the problem is that anyone noticed she tweeted that out publicly over the summer.
State libraries in Montana, Missouri, and Texas announced they were severing ties with the ALA, which is good. They should.
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Meanwhile, librarians and those on the political Left are defending the ALA as a key provider of money and skills for librarians. In particular, they are citing an ALA report tracking 1,269 attempts to remove library books in 2022, the highest number of challenges to books since the ALA began compiling stats on the issue.
Good for parents for finally waking up and taking notice.
And the fact that parents fighting back against the indoctrination of their kids is considered Right-wing radicalism is an indication of how far the Left will go to vilify them.