CV NEWS FEED // A coalition of 13 conservative organizations called on more states to break ties with the American Library Association (ALA) over its embrace of gender ideology and other far-left beliefs.
Representatives from these groups drafted a letter Thursday, calling on “Those With the Responsibility to Act” to “move on from” the ALA. They said that the almost 150-year-old library group “has become an organization that is undermining our country’s Constitutional rights and attacking its moral foundation, especially under its current leadership.”
“The ALA’s deliberate hostility towards religious Americans and its obsession with the promotion of gender ideology to children are especially concerning because of its de facto status as the umbrella organization that controls programming and organizational support for state, local, and religious library associations across the country,” the letter continued:
We cannot stand idly by as our own tax dollars are used to intimidate millions of Americans, trample their parental rights, and control their access to information. On behalf of the millions of Americans that our groups represent, we call on the state and religious affiliates of the ALA to sever their relationships with this problematic organization. We further call on state legislatures to ensure that no taxpayer dollars can be used by these associations or by state and local libraries to support the ALA in any way.
An investigation into the ALA by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), one of the groups among the letter signatories, “revealed funding from George Soros” and “an agenda of drag queens, sexually explicit lessons for kids, and Critical Race Theory.”
“Our investigation has revealed that ALA has now mobilized their power for the purposes of sexualizing and indoctrinating our children,” AAF wrote in a series of tweets published July 27.
The AAF also pointed out that ALA President Emily Drabinski is a far-left activist who describes herself as a “Marxist.”
Some states have already dropped the ALA. Missouri became the first early last month.
On July 7, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, R-MO, sent a letter to ALA Executive Director Tracie Hall stating that his office
cannot continue to support an organization that does not protect the first amendment rights of Missourians and refuses to follow its own governing documents. Therefore, I have instructed my staff to discontinue any future financial payments to the American Library Association. My hope is that you reconsider this blatantly political stance, abide by your own principles, and protect the rights of Missourians.
Days later, the state of Montana followed, citing Drabinski’s April 2022 election. The Montana State Library Commission said that their “oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.”
In April, the ALA expressed support for a list of 13 “challenged” books, including the pornographic novel Gender Queer, which is primarily marketed toward minors and contains an explicit illustration depicting a minor fantasizing about being molested by an adult.
In June, the ALA responded to CatholicVote’s successful Hide the Pride campaign accusing the effort to protect children from harmful books of being
an unethical and hateful censorship tactic that has long been used by censors to circumvent a library’s reconsideration processes and to stigmatize and erase the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community.
“CatholicVote launched Hide the Pride to warn parents of the vile and pornographic content being pushed on our children by our public libraries,” said Joshua Mercer, vice president of CatholicVote. “We applaud these conservative leaders for encouraging states to disentangle themselves from the American Library Association – which sadly supports porn books for kids.”
