“Banned Books Week” – September 27 – October 4, 2008

By: Steve Huston

Personal note:

Some twenty years ago I was still of the mind that the local public library was run by caring, grandmotherly types who loved children, fairness, honesty and the good old-fashioned value of guarding the hearts and minds of youngsters while at the same time encouraging them to read good literature and research areas of study that would build up, not destroy.

Then, I became aware through my efforts to strengthen Michigan’s obscenity laws, that the greatest objectors to such efforts were the local public libraries. I then discovered behind this opposition was the American Library Association. Indeed, the ALA is a very liberal association with concerning influence upon our local communities nationwide.

One time in my local community a friend’s son came across a magazine in the public library that had advertisements for pornography. He asked if there was anything that he could do.

I told him that he could go back to the library and fill out a form at the library requesting that the foul advertisement merely be pulled out.

Was I ever naive! He filled out the form and then received a notification from the library that they had scheduled a review hearing for the material and for his concern.

Little did I know, nor my friend, that the library took this as some kind of free speech threat so the library leadership “circled the wagon”. A librarian from an adjoining community was in attendance shoring up the local librarian – as well as a public school high school teacher and his class who somehow had been made aware of the proceedings and had his class attend the hearing.

The long and short of it is that this father was bushwacked. They gave consideration to his concern, made a spectacle of him (though politely), thanked him for his concern and made no change. He was humiliated and hurt, but grew up fast to the realization that such a review committee was not an objective hearing where a person’s expression of concern would be handled with fairness and objectivity. This is not an isolated incident. This is the general procedure.

And then there is the so-called “Banned Book Week”

The American Library Association’s “Banned Book Week” is a week scheduled very early in the school year to stake ground and send a message that expressing concern about a book, DVD, magazine, etc., will be met with serious opposition and you will surely be labeled as a CENSOR. Who wants to be called a censor? Because merely expressing concern about a pornographic image, or material fostering an alternative and damaging lifestyle is seen by these “objective” souls as censorship.

In other words, then, you and I should never express concern about anything that concerns us within the public school classroom or local library because the ALA believes in the “Freedom to Read and the Freedom to View.” There should be no constraints on anything.

Cal Thomas wrote about this in his column in September 1995.
He stated it this way:

‘Banned Books Week’ stokes the fire
by Cal Thomas, Syndicated Columnist
Taken from the Muskegon Chronicle, 9/22/95

As surely as September is back¬to-school month, so is it also when the self-anointed guardians of our children’s intellect observe “Banned Books Week.” They seem to treat any objection to a published work as akin to the 1933 Nazi book-burning party in Berlin.

Since the heyday of these “anti-censorship” groups In the 1980s, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find public bonfires by snake-handling preachers from the West Virginia mountains. The American Library Assn. (ALA) and its liberal allies, therefore, must fuel the polutical fires with incendiary rhetoric that is more fantasy than some of the books they allege right-wing extremists and anti-intellectual censors are trying to ban.

An ALA report titled “Banned Books Resource Gulde” was reviewed by the conservative Focus on the Family organization. It discovered that no books were literally banned last year from public libraries. Neither were any books banned from bookstores. The ALA counts as book-banning efforts by parents to become involved In their children’s education by raising questions concerning age-appropriate material.

If parents raised such objections in connection with what type of food is being fed their children in the school cafeteria, they would be regarded as interested in the welfare of children. That they occasionally raise questions about the quality of intellectual “nourishment” at the school qualifies them, according to the ALA, as book-banners.

The ALA claims to have “documented” 214 separate incidents involving 164 different book titles during the past year. Of the 214 incidents it lists, only one was the subject of anything resemblng a “banning” attempt. That book, according to the Focus on the Family survey, was a paperback about women’s sexual fantasies that included lesbian encounters, group sex, rape and bestiality. The library chose not to order a replacement copy after the young daughter of a library patron borrowed the book and “accidentally” dropped it in a dishwasher.

When one considers there are 17,000 public libraries in the United States, and that the “banning” incidents claimed by the ALA took place at only 35 libraries in 21 different ‘library systems, this hardly qualifies as a tidal wave of intolerance and censorship. But it does help fund-raisers for the next anti-censorship campaign, and the money raised will keep the ALA’s “Office of Intellectual Freedom” open.

In four of the cited incidents, libraries simply transferred books to a different shelf within the library. One incident the ALA labeled censorship was a case of vandalism at a library in Coquille, Ore. A patron had whited out some sexually explicit language and profane words in a book – a crime punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine. The librarian, Molly DePlois, was quoted as saying the act was “totally anonymous.” Neither DePlois nor anyone else in town claimed this single incident constituted censorship.

Other incidents cited by the ALA were trivial, nonexistent or, in one case, disgusting. A teacher read a book to a sixth-grade class that was full of language depicting the sex act. An ll-year-old child complained to his parents, who protested to the teacher. The parents asked not that the book be banned but that it be reserved for the group designated by its rating: young adult.

Is there any doubt what the ALA position might have been had the teacher read out loud to students from the Bible? Banning that book from school has been one of many liberals’ highest priorities.

The ALA and its “Banned Books Week” co-sponsor, the American Booksellers Assoiation, could more profitably spend their time in other pursuits – literacy, for example. Instead, they continue promoting the fiction of a national threat to the knowledge pool from an occasional parent raising objections about sexually explicit material being read to elementary school students. The only ones to profit from this exercise are the groups conducting it and the fund¬raisers who specialize in scare tactics and false claims to keep the money rolling in.

In closing, why do I write this? What positive is there to come from sharing it with you?

It is better to know than not to know the philosophy of operation behind most libraries because most public libraries have been significantly influenced by the American Library Association.

I love books. I once loved libraries.

For more information about “Banned Books – this is an ALA’s link
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.cfm

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American Decency Association
Bill Johnson, President
P.O. Box 202
Fremont, MI 49412
ph: 231-924-4050
https://americandecency.org

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