The Montana State Library Commission recently voted to break all ties with the Marxist-led American Library Association (ALA). The decision is emblematic of the corruption of public and school libraries across the country which are increasingly exposing children to obscene materials. State and local efforts to reform libraries are undercut when national groups control and rain money on the library system. More states, including Idaho, should follow Montana's action.
On Tuesday, the Montana Library Commission Board voted 5-1-1 to withdraw from the ALA. The decision came in response to the President of the ALA declaring herself a "Marxist lesbian." Drabinski is an advocate for queering the libraries, which she argued for in a 2013 paper published in Library Quarterly. "Queer theory challenges us to interrogate the processes and power relations that produce certain ways of knowing and being as correct and others as wrong, deviant, and less worthy of life," she wrote. Drabinski's conclusion reveals her intent to use her power in the ALA to promote deviance and the sexualization of children.
The Montana Library Commission, therefore, had solid ground for its decision to sever ties with the ALA. Commissioner Tom Burnett directed that a letter be sent to the ALA explaining that the Montana Library Commissions's oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution "forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist" and therefore must immediately withdraw the state library from the association.
The ALAs agenda of queering the libraries has been imposed through partnerships with Library Commissions in states across the country, including Idaho. The ALA provides training and resources to state library commissions such as Rainbow Book Lists which include obscene books about transgenderism and deviance like Bye Bye Binary and Teos Tutu for toddlers or Queer as All Get Out and You Know Sex for 10-year-olds. The ALA has repeatedly defended pornographic books available to children in school and public libraries.
The ALA also works to increase federal funding for state libraries, a subject IFF’s Center for American Education has repeatedly written about. ALA works to preserve and enhance the Institute of Museum and Library Services (MLS), which distributes funds through state grants and the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency, offers several grant programs to states. The Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICfL) has accepted millions of dollars from the IMLS to "increase the amount of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) resources a school or public library has available." Many local libraries participating in the grant program under ICfL conducted diversity audits of their collections.
As a result of following ALA guidance and accepting federal funds, Idaho libraries have stocked their shelves with graphic children's books that promote things like kink, sexual deviancy, transgenderism, and early sex among children.
The role the ALA and federal dollars have played in corrupting Idaho's public and school libraries cannot be ignored any longer. It's time for the Idaho Commission for Libraries to follow Montana's decision to end its membership with the ALA. If it doesn’t, the Legislature should once again exercise oversight of the ICfL budget.
Breaking ties with the ALA and ending federal subsidies to libraries will not restore sound morals and a love of genuine children’s literature. Public libraries are often staffed by hardcore leftists and ideologues. But it’s a realistic, necessary reform and a good place to start.
