PBS NewsHour Report: “As LGBTQ Book Challenges Rise, Some Louisiana Librarians are Scared to Go to Work”

From the PBS NewsHour:

Librarians in Louisiana are being targeted and facing harassment from conservative activists who want to ban or limit access to LGBTQ books in public libraries.

Ever since Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian, spoke out broadly against censorship over the summer, she has found herself in the crosshairs of an escalating, statewide campaign.

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“Just because you don’t want to read or see [a particular book], it does not give you the right to deny others or demand its relocation,” said Jones at the meeting. She is the president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians and has worked as an educator and librarian in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, for more than two decades.

“Once you start relocating and banning one topic, it becomes a slippery slope, and where does it end?” she added. Since then, Jones said she has faced unrelenting attacks online, like falsely representing that she shares “sexually erotic and pornographic materials” with children as young as six and “advocat[es] teaching anal sex to 11 year olds,” according to a defamation lawsuit filed by Jones in August against the owners of two conservative Facebook groups. In court documents, Jones claimed she was cast “as a deviant and a danger to children.” The lawsuit was dismissed in September but Jones plans to appeal.

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Typically quiet libraries and board meetings have been transformed into anxiety-filled spaces in several parishes of the state, including those in Bossier, Livingston, Rapides, and Lafayette.

The majority of the book challenges across Louisiana last year focused on titles for children and young adults with LGBTQ themes, according to an analysis from the Louisiana Illuminator. Out of the state’s 64 parishes, only five reported receiving challenges last year.

The largest clash over books is centered in St. Tammany Parish, a suburb of New Orleans, where a growing list of more than 150 books is being challenged in a coordinated campaign to put pressure on the seven-member St. Tammany Library Board of Control.

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