Global Courant 2023-04-14 21:46:23
Leaders in a rural Texas county held a special rally on Thursday, but backed down from the drastic option of closing their public library system instead of complying with a federal judge’s order to return books to shelves on thematic issues ranging from teenage sexuality and gender to bigotry and race.
Following public comments both for and against a potential closure, the Llano County Commissioners Court decided to remove consideration of a potential closure from its agenda and assured that the three libraries remain open.
“We’re going to try this in court, not through social media or news media,” said Ron Cunningham, a Llano County judge, presiding judge of the commissioners’ court and one of the defendants in a lawsuit filed a year ago by library patrons. .
The battle in Llano County, home to about 20,000 people in the Texas hill country outside Austin, reflects an explosion of attempts in recent years to ban books in the US amid escalating cultural wars.
The special meeting was called after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued a temporary injunction last month that returned nearly 20 books to library shelves.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said this was the first time she was aware of officials considering shutting down a system altogether.
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According to the lawsuit, starting in 2021, the defendants began using a variety of tactics to keep certain books out of customers’ hands, from moving children’s books they objected to into the adult section to temporarily suspending use of their digital library. The lawsuit also said the steps included dissolving a previous library board and then packing it in with appointees, including many of those who had pressured the system to ban books.
The other defendants are the four district commissioners, the current director of the library system, and some new library board members.
One of the library’s new board members is Bonnie Wallace, one of the speakers at Thursday’s meeting. Wallace, who said there were more than 200 additional books she said should be banned, was among those who read explicit sex scenes from books they said were currently on shelves.
“I’m in favor of temporarily closing the libraries until we find a solution to the pornographic filth we have,” Wallace said.
Texas county officials debated closing a public library after a federal judge ordered multiple controversial books returned to shelves.
Resident James Arno, who was in favor of keeping the libraries open, said parents can monitor what their children are reading without denying access to others.
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“It’s not our job to burn this thing down to prevent kids from reading what these people are reading,” Arno said, referring to explicit material read at the rally. “It’s the parents’ job to know what their kids like.”
Caldwell-Stone said the books targeted in Llano County fit trends they’re seeing across the country. “The demands we see are to remove books that reflect the lives and experiences of LGBTQIA persons or the lives and experiences of persons of color, particularly black persons,” she said.
The books that were kept off the shelf include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health” by Robie H. Harris and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.
Others were children’s picture books, including “Larry the Farting Leprechaun” by Jane Bexley and “My Butt is So Noisy!” by Dawn McMillan.
“These are books that we’ve found over the years to particularly appeal to young male readers and are really great tools for encouraging early literacy and a love of reading,” Caldwell-Stone said.
More than 1,200 challenges were compiled by the ALA last year, by far the most since the association began keeping records more than 20 years ago. The number in 2022 was nearly double the then-record total for 2021.
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The tumult in Llano County has caught the attention of notable conservatives. The attorney representing the county is Jonathan Mitchell, an architect of a 2021 Texas anti-abortion law that was briefly the strictest in the nation before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Mitchell, who has appealed the judge’s order in the library case, argued in a recent suit that the plaintiffs’ claims that their First Amendment rights had been violated “cannot get off the ground” because the books are currently available. were to check out through the library’s library. own system.
But the judge wrote in his order that books hidden in a back room and not in the catalog would not be within the reach of the public.
“This is, of course, an obvious and deliberate attempt by defendants to make it difficult, if not impossible, to access the material sought by plaintiffs,” Pitman wrote.
