EMILY GILL
Two issues have recently claimed prominent positions in news reports. First, as of June 29, 20 states had enacted laws banning gender-transition care for minors. A federal judge in Arkansas, however, temporarily blocked a state law in June forbidding gender treatment for children and teens, stating that by prohibiting this care, “the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,” or the well-being of youth as judged by their parents or guardians. A Florida judge also ruled against parts of the state ban. Some families in states with bans are considering moves to states where their children can continue to receive care.
Second, in many states, counties and/or school districts are requiring that particular books be removed from public or school libraries or remain available only if parents “opt in” by allowing their children access. In Lee County, Fla., for example, students’ parents must fill out a “media access form” allowing specific access to challenged books, even when the contents of these books have been found acceptable by a “state-certified media specialist.”
It is one thing for some parents to request that a library examine a particular book for its age-appropriateness, but another when groups of parents find a list of potential targets online that these parents may not even have examined themselves. And they often contact not librarians, but library boards or state legislators concerned with library funding. In South Dakota, some books have been removed from display and must be requested from “behind the counter.” How are people to know that they are there to be requested? In San Diego, two residents of one area library checked out all displayed books with LGBTQ content in a “Hide the Pride” effort in June, saying they would return them only when the library agreed to permanent removal. Other citizens stepped up, however, with welcome donations of many boxes of LGBTQ-themed books.
A contradiction appears. First, many conservative politicians and public authorities do not trust parents to make appropriate decisions for their children concerning medical care. Second, they are all too willing to listen to parents who not only want to restrict their own children from exposure to certain library materials, but who also want to make these decisions for everyone else’s children. Libraries are supposed to reflect a broad range of materials and viewpoints. They are not supposed to be government-curated collections that reflect just one or a few views of reality, those approved by small groups of parents.
In 1982, the Supreme Court in Island Trees School District v. Pico ruled that government officials cannot remove books from libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained therein. According to the American Library Association, in 2022 the 1,261 attempts to remove library books nearly doubled over the 2021 rate. The majority of these attempts concerned LGBTQ issues or those related to people of color.
In 1925, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters the Supreme Court invalidated an Oregon law that required children to attend public schools rather than private ones, specifically protecting the rights of parents to direct their children’s education. Nothing was said about parental rights to direct the education of other people’s children. And the disconnect between some conservatives’ distrust of parental decisions on transgender care versus their trust in parental dictates about library policies reveals a concern for politics over citizens’ well-being.