Whenever conservatives oppose obscene material on children’s library shelves, leftists dispute the characterizations and claim the right just wants to ban books. A shocking new report about the aims of the American Library Association’s president, however, vindicates parents’ fears.
The American Accountability Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, published a video and memo this month compiling radical quotes from Emily Drabinski, the president of the powerful American Library Association (ALA), a nonprofit that receives some of its money from member libraries, many of which are taxpayer-funded. The ALA, the oldest and biggest library association boasting nearly 50,000 members, coordinates programs at local libraries across America.
The report documents Drabinski, a self-described lesbian Marxist, attacking conservatives and parents as “far right, white supremacist, fascist,” an “angry white mob,” and the “Christo-fascist right.”
Being a Marxist, Drabinski said, is “very much who I am and shapes a lot of how I think about social change.” She has criticized the idea of “gender as a binary system with only two acceptable gender markers” and championed LGBT books in children’s sections. Drabinski, who supports drag queen story hours, also whined in a 2013 academic paper that religious books under the Dewey Decimal System are “overwhelmingly Christian” and present heterosexuality as “normative.”
In a 2009 magazine article, Drabinski described the moment she determined she was a lesbian: She said she found a “magical” library book when she was about 14 years old that contained “fantastic queer sex in a field.”
Libraries are “good places that do all kinds of things that people on the right don’t like,” Drabinski said on the “Citations Needed” podcast in March, according to the report.
As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported, the ALA has faced increased backlash under Drabinski’s tenure. Leaders from more than a dozen conservative organizations have called for states to disaffiliate from the ALA, resulting in officials publicly disavowing the group and even cutting funding. As Justice reported earlier this month:
In July, Missouri became the first to cut ties with the 147-year-old umbrella association. Missouri Secretary of State John Ashcroft sent the ALA a letter terminating the relationship on July 7. The Montana State Library Commission voted to follow suit four days later. Lawmakers in eight more states have now signaled they are preparing to sever the relationship between the ALA and their local library commissions.
Texas was the latest state to drop the ALA. State Rep. Brian Harrison led the effort and condemned left-wing attempts to smear the move as a pro-censorship “book ban.”
“There is a difference in saying, ‘No, you’re not going to take tax money to buy pornography to put in taxpayer-funded elementary schools and give them to second graders,’” Harrison said. “That is not the same as a book ban. If you’re an adult, there is not a book or video you cannot purchase today in the United States of America.”
In response to conservative opposition, Drabinski has resorted to hyperbole, saying that “there have been bounties placed on librarians heads for circulating child pornography.” But calling the books porn is no exaggeration.
One such library book — which the ALA has included on its list of “most challenged” books, citing anti-LGBT “censorship” — is Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. The book includes graphic descriptions and illustrations of oral sex, masturbation, sex toys, orgasms, and transgender fantasies. In 2020, the book won the ALA’s Alex Award, which is for books that are “written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.” Gender Queer has been the subject of much backlash over its pornographic content.
Drabinski, however, is not slowing down. “We need to be as organized as they are when we push back,” she said of the ALA’s ideological crusade against the right.
