When word got around that a local activist planned to ask the Fairhope City Council to ban LGBTQ books from the teen section of the public library, library supporters, book clubs, and other community groups rallied to fight back. They packed a city council meeting, arguing that the library should remain a safe place for free expression.

“I’m pretty sure no one who came tonight changed their mind,” Fairhope resident B.K. Gray said at a recent packed city council meeting. “A group came to ban books, and a group came to defend books, and nobody changed their mind.”

About 150 people attended the meeting, not for anything on the agenda, but for discussion about the library.

Brian A. Dasinger, a local attorney and conservative Christian advocate, spoke on behalf of the Faith Family Freedom Coalition of Baldwin County, a chapter of the organization that advocated against Mobile annexation because of their opposition to Mobile’s actions supporting LGBTQ people. He attended a city council meeting this summer to express his disapproval of a pride event at the Fairhope Pier.

“Many of the books that are contained in the library have really little-to-no redeeming benefits,” Dasinger told the council. “We fear that the impact of these books to young adults and juveniles may result in mental health issues and unnecessary loss of innocence. I’ve read several excerpts from these books, and they’re basically pornographic in nature.”

Dasinger also called out the library’s librarian who oversees the teen section, who he said supports mandatory masking, the LGBTQ movement, Black Lives Matter, abortion rights “and other Marxist ideology.”

“Her views do not represent the ideals of the majority of Fairhope residents,” he told the council. At about this point, his allotted three minutes ran out, and people in the audience started calling time and yelling over him before Council President Jay Robinson silenced the crowd and allowed him to continue.

The librarian, who declined to comment on the backlash, has received support from members of the community and coworkers at the library since that meeting.

Members of the Fairhope Public Library Board of Trustees told AL.com they were informed personally by Dasinger that he planned to attend the city council meeting to speak about library books.

Word spread among library supporters and others in the community so that they could attend the meeting and share their views.

Yet despite all of the outcry, Jay Robinson, the president of the Fairhope City Council, told the crowd that the council has “no input” on which books go into the public library.

“This is not a city council issue, this is a library issue,” Robinson said. “The library has a board, and I would expect everybody who has expressed an opinion tonight will express that opinion to the board.”

Still, dozens of people spoke to the council during the public comment portion of the meeting, with most of them supporting the library.

“The public library gives my children freedom and access to books that I can’t afford to give them, and that is priceless,” Fairhope resident Lauren Cress said.

A few speakers said parents are responsible for what their kids read at the library, not the librarians.

“If you are the parent or the guardian of a child, you are in charge of making sure that child learns how to make selections in life,” said Linda Gibson, a grandparent and library volunteer from Fairhope. “You are that person that’s in charge of teaching that child. You don’t want to do it? Fine. But then don’t blame somebody else for whatever that child does.”

Jada Pryor said her daughter and other teenage readers in Fairhope support the librarian whom Dasinger condemned.

“They’re not here because they’re with her right now at a teen program that she provides,” Pryor said, adding that, at the library, her child has “learned community leadership, she has put on plays, she has learned interpersonal skills.”

Anne Johnson, the chair of the library’s board of trustees, defended its collection.

“In a typical year, we have no — as in zero — or maybe one request to reconsider a book purchase, and we have a process for that,” Johnson said. “In the last three weeks, we’ve had three requests, each with a book list, totaling some 55 books. This kind of feels like a coordinated and targeted attack on the library.”

Of those 55 books, eight are not carried in the Fairhope location, one is not carried in any Baldwin County libraries and 14 are not cataloged in the teen section of the library, according to a search of the library’s catalog by AL.com, which obtained a copy of the list.

Most of the books listed contain LGBTQ themes or discussions about race. Many that are challenged due to sexual content are already cataloged in adult sections.

“The library board is unanimous in supporting the right to read for all of Fairhope’s citizens,” she said.

Libraries across the state and nation faced unprecedented book challenges in the last year. This summer, Foley and Prattville’s libraries were the target of similar calls “to clean up” local libraries that caught the attention of Governor Kay Ivey.

In a Sept. 1 letter, Ivey said she had grown increasingly concerned about “the environment our Alabama libraries are providing to families and children.”

According to the American Library Association, attempts to ban books in 2022 were the highest they have been since the group began tracking.

“This is a form of censorship,” Johnson said. “There are young people in our community who may be struggling with their identity, with the teen years, who may not have a support system at home, or at school or at their church, who may be being bullied or even suicidal. And we may have books in the library that can help get them through a difficult period. No one person or group has the right to dictate what books and information others have access to.”