More than a dozen Republican lawmakers in the Idaho legislature are calling on the state’s library commission to cut ties with the American Library Association (ALA) over the latter’s Marxist programming and promotion of sexually explicit material.
On Monday, 13 members of the legislature’s Freedom Caucus released a statement urging the Idaho Commission for Libraries and all “local and school libraries” to terminate membership with the ALA.
“We have significant concerns about the election of Emily Drabinski, a self-described ‘Marxist-lesbian,’ as the next president of the ALA,” lawmakers said. “Her election raises issues about libraries’ involvement in exposing children to explicit materials and injecting hard-left politics and sexuality into publicly funded libraries.”
Drabinski, who was elected ALA president in April last year, celebrated her triumphant victory with a post on social media.
“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 [the ALA],” she wrote on Twitter. “I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity!”
Idaho Freedom Caucus members outlined a series of complaints with Drabinski’s leadership that lawmakers say warrants a separation from state and local libraries.
“Drabinski has said in interviews that librarians aren’t focused on assisting minors in accessing pornography, but her writings and public presentations reveal that she has dedicated her professional career to precisely that while using taxpayer resources,” they wrote. “Drabinski proposed using ‘queer theory’ to guide the way books are cataloged in libraries.”
Drabinski proposed doing so in a 2013 paper at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Idaho lawmakers also complained “the ALA has provided LGBT resources and pressured libraries to include explicit materials on transgenderism and sexual deviance targeting young children.”
In April, the Daily Signal reported on a list of 13 books the association recommended teens and young adults pick up to “show your commitment to the freedom to read.” The ALA described the 13 books as the most “challenged” under the current educational environment, blaming anti-LGBT prejudice. The top five on the association’s list of 13 feature sexually explicit material.
If the Idaho library commission were to successfully cut ties with the ALA, the Gem State would join neighboring Montana, which did the same this month. The move was met with praise from freedom caucus chapters in other states, with lawmakers in Wyoming, Georgia, and Mississippi calling on their own local libraries to follow suit. The Campbell County Library Board in Wyoming has already voted to divest from the ALA, according to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
