Appeasing Censors Doesn't Work
Sometimes libraries or schools seem to think that appeasing book challengers will settle things down. That if they give in on one or two books, the challengers will go away and the library can return to normal. In the Autumn of 2020, the Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, Library (LPL) adopted an appeasement strategy and it failed spectacularly. Too often, book challengers take this sort of appeasement as surrender and demand that the library purge even more items from the library. LPL’s experience is a cautionary tale.
Standard form email complaint.
The issue at LPL began with a series of emails from over a dozen local residents. This was obviously coordinated as they tended to use the same form letter, seen above. Other emails made clear that the two books complained of were Melissa (formerly George) and Rick by Alex Gino. As Melissa depicts the life of a fourth grade trans girl, it has long been targeted for censorship on that basis (though it is often pretended that the objections are about a passing reference to “dirty magazines”). Rick is a sequel of sorts that follows a minor character from Melissa as he navigates middle school life and maybe being asexual. Interestingly, the library Director Vivian McCain’s first reaction was not to defend the book but to say that she would never have put it on display because “I understand the conservative community we live in and would never antagonize someone by displaying what some deem as inappropriate.” This is a form of soft censorship, something that probably happens a lot in libraries but few want to openly acknowledge. When the challengers provided images of the two books on a display shelf, the director said that some patron must have done it because the staff knew not to display such books.
Despite this admission to soft censorship, McCain initially took a hard line to the challenge. In an email to other librarians, she definitively stated that she “fully expect[s] to be fired over this. I will not remove them from my shelves and I will not create a reserve shelf behind the desk.” Within hours, however, she gave in and wrote to the challengers that both books would be removed and placed on a shelf restricted to parental access. The cause of this change has to be a bit speculative because a meeting, for which I have no records, was held between members of the Library Board and McCain at some point that day. It is reasonably clear that they forced this change on her. As the email above, sent to an LPL librarian, the change is treated as forced on her by “other folks,” almost certainly one or more vocal members of the library board, and driven by a desire to avoid public controversy with a library tax issue coming up on the ballot. Below is the tempered, formal response provided to challengers.
Unsurprisingly, this unjustified removal and restriction did not satisfy the book challengers. Almost immediately they came back to demand the removal of the “remainder of the LGBTQ items in the Children’s” department to a restricted access shelf. Nothing was ever provided as to why these books are objectionable apart from the fact that they dare to depict queer people existing. For that the books must be hidden away. McCain took the opportunity to gloat a bit as she had clearly warned the pro-censorship elements of the board that this would happen.
Clearly the board was divided. Deborah Hollimon responded “I TOTALLY AGREE. Enough is enough. They are not [librarians] and cannot dictate what the citizens of Lincoln Parish are allowed to read. Do not respond.” David Gullatt, on the other hand, initially responded in a vague manner that said he agreed to the removal of Melissa and Rick only because of “a national track record” - the reference being to the frequent of Melissa but he ignored that Rick has not been surrounded by controversy. It was up to the challengers to prove that all the rest of the books should be restricted. But then Gullatt noted that “If staff know these type books cause negative reactions then the discussion can be facilitated by inviting community leaders to join the book order planning in the future.” It is hard to read this as anything other than turning over the selection of materials to community censors. Gullatt, however, pivoted quickly to an attack on the director as causing all of this. In essence, he complained that she had mislead them into thinking only two books were involved to let the board “take the heat for what the Director did.” This ignores the obvious record where only two books were complained about initially. Sadly the board caved again.
This message clearly states that the censorship was ordered by the library board only. All LGTBQ material in the children’s section (full list here) would be purged and locked down. I can’t state definitively what happened next because the record doesn’t disclose it but clearly someone went to the local press, almost certainly one of the librarians, with the details and the paper published a story on 4 December 2020 with the headline “Library removes LGTBQ books from kids’ section.” Up until this point the controversy had all been contained within the library and presumably the censorship group who was happily winning. This press attention brought a deluge of emails from other press outlets and concerned patrons that the library would cave so easily to censorship. Amusingly, my own records request is mentioned a few times as a sign of the enormous controversy the library was now in. A few days after the story, McCain complained that the “policies we have in place would have prevented this whole mess, if a few board members would have allowed me to do my job, instead of stepping in.”
When the tax vote failed, the board retreated at its 9 December meeting. The books were returned to their proper location and the policy was amended with a note that controlling a child’s reading is for the parent only and no one else. A few weeks later, McCain was fired, or, euphemistically, allowed to retire. It is unclear how much the book controversy figured into this as the discussion suggests a lot of tension on many issues between the board and the director but it certainly seems like the book controversy was a final straw.
Being a librarian is not easy, especially when you are in a political moment when conservatives are leading a broad war on books. These kinds of complaints are becoming more common as this war has only escalated in the past year. The only responsible decision was McCain’s initial response: to refuse the challenge. The library serves the whole of the community and when one part of it tries to excise entire subjects, such as the fact that LGBTQ people exist, that must be refused. As the final policy noted, parents have a right to control their child from the dangerous knowledge that there are trans people in the world, but they do not have the right to control the choices of others. That was the demand here, to hide the books in a restricted area so that no one could easily come across this dangerous knowledge. The board’s pro-censorship appeasement failed spectacularly. The censors just came back for more and, importantly, this was facilitated by the secrecy of the events. Had this been done in public from the start, anti-censorship patrons could have rallied to support the library. Eventually the forceful criticism of the pro-censorship board helped force the retreat. Hopefully others learn from this key lesson from Lincoln Parish: appeasement of censors only encourages more censorship.
