The executive board of the Alabama Public Library Service Executive Board Wednesday voted to create a list of books with content that people may find inappropriate for teenagers and children.

The proposal, sponsored by Alabama Republican Party chair John Wahl, a member of the board, came after a crowded public comment period. It passed unanimously.

Across the country, libraries have faced challenges to their content. Simultaneously, libraries have withdrawn or discussed withdrawing the American Library Association due to the Association’s defense of LGBTQ+ books and comments made by the current president, according to the Associated Press.

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Last month, challenges to books with rainbow stickers from the mayor prompted a public meeting on books in Ozark.

Under Wahl’s proposal, people can submit books that they believe have questionable themes to the Public Library Service. The forms will then be provided to local libraries. The libraries themselves will decide what to do with the books.

Wahl said to reporters after the meeting that local libraries are not required to do anything, and the list is only meant to be a resource for libraries and parents.

“I don’t think that APL has the authority to directly tell a local library you cannot have this book, and so what we want to do is we want to be a good resource,” he said.

The board has asked the Alabama attorney general’s office to determine the scope of its authority.

Wahl told reporters that the aim is to keep minors from accidentally stumbling onto age-inappropriate content, and his motion does not restrict the ability for teens to check out books from the adult section.

According to the American Library Association, attempts to ban books in 2022 were the highest they have been since they began tracking. Chicago-area libraries have been receiving bomb threats amid conversations around book bans.

A large turnout

The board’s Wednesday meeting drew more people than there were chairs to seat them. Some people were sent to an overflow room.

Proponents of restricting book access said that they were not trying to ban books, and they were not targeting the LGBTQ+ community.

Hannah Rees, who has been involved in trying to restrict books in the Prattville Library System through the organization, Clean Up Alabama, spoke in the public comment period. She distributed to board members what she said was a survey of Alabama’s libraries regarding books that had been challenged and where they were in the review process.

Rees read aloud a sexually-explicit passage from what she said was the book Tricks by Ellen Hopkins. On Hopkins’s website, the book is described as being about five young people who fall into prostitution. The Alabama Reflector has not read Tricks.

“Any book that we’ve brought to your attention is highlighting sexual acts for children and involving gender ideologies for children,” she said.

Rees said that the book is currently in the Madison Library. The online card catalog says it is currently in the young adult section of the North Huntsville Branch.

Rep. Susan DuBose, R-Hoover, said that a library in north Shelby County had a display of LGBTQ+ books. She said that the display was in June, which was the busiest time in summer. June is Pride month.

“These books all introduce transgender issues to young children, for example, they could choose their sex boy girl or other, that parents may have been wrong about their sex, that their doctor may have been wrong, that sex is based on how they feel,” said DuBose, who has sponsored bills to ban trangender athletes from college college and put definitions of gender in state law.

DuBose also spoke about the American Library Association, where Emily Drabinski, who identifies as a Marxist, is currently the president. Drabinski is an associate professor at Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies.

DuBose quoted a 2008 academic article by Drabinski, saying that Drabinski wants to turn libraries into spaces of “queerness and difference rather than of democracy and citizenship.” The publication, “Queering Library Space: Notes Toward a New Geography of the Library,” focused on the example of a library board voting to remove some LGBTQ+ books and the spatial layout of libraries. In context, Drabinski wrote about the potential to reorder libraries beyond the traditional Dewey Decimal System and include books that present a multitude of identities and experiences.

“The social space of the library changes from that of an ordering machine that subordinates objects in a classification scheme that serves the citizen-making project of democracy,” Drabinski wrote. “Instead, perhaps we can begin to imagine a spatial practice of the library that would place the queer books at the West Gate branch at the first order of social space.”

Kassandra Stevens from Shelby County said that she didn’t want to remove books, but she wanted to remove the book display.

“McCarthyism was thrown at us from our local library, as we asked simply to remove a display in the children’s section, not ban the books, not burn the books, not remove the books from the library, simply to not choose one ideology over another to promote and focus on for a full month, the month that all the children are coming in,” she said.

On the other side, proponents of leaving the books alone said that they wanted the libraries to have freedom.

Matthew Layne, president of the Alabama Library Association, said that libraries should reflect the communities they serve.

“LGBTQ+, Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant and so many other stories all deserve a home on our library shelves, because they are the stories of our communities,” he said.

Layne also spoke about the benefits of the national American Library Association, such as workshops they offer.

“When we talk about A.L.A., we are not talking about a sinister cabal,” he said. “We are talking about our parents, our siblings and our neighbors who chose the profession of librarian to serve their communities.”

Michael Cairns, vice-chair of the Ozark board, spoke about his experience in Ozark, and said that moving books in libraries will not make a difference because once a parent signs off on a minor having a library card, they are free to pick out books. He said that he reviews books picked out by his child at the library and at the bookstore.

“This is not about personal beliefs,” he said. “This is about right and wrong. I didn’t ask for any of your help to raise any of my children. I’m not asking now.”

Jim Vickrey, former president of the University of Montevallo, said that he opposed anything related to book and child banning from the libraries. He told the story of when he was a kid, and he read a biography of Ralph Bunche, which he said encouraged him to think more about the morality of segregation. He also referenced To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which he said was controversial at the time.

“Those books were available to me and others because professional librarians of the sort you just heard using appropriate library standards at the time, which still exists, chose and displayed those books,” he said.