Michigan library defunded after refusing to censor LGBTQ authors

Pommer said:

Public libraries = brothels now?
This is beyond satire.

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What, you didn't hang out at the brothel after school to do homework?

essentialsaltes said:

Voters in Jamestown Township, a politically conservative community in Ottawa County, rejected renewal Tuesday of a millage that would support the Patmos Library. That vote guts the library’s operating budget in 2023 — 84 percent of the library’s $245,000 budget comes from property taxes collected through a millage.

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And here I was led to believe that cancel culture was something that liberals did.

It should be clear to everyone who is not an inflexible ideologue that everyone tries to cancel what or who they wish would have a lesser influence on society/their community. It's behind 'conservative' de-fundings like this, as well as 'liberal' de-platformings like disruptions of non-progressive speakers at college campuses and so on. Anyone who's trying to paint this as something only the 'other side' does is just engaging in special pleading.

Basically, there are the cancellations we like and the cancellations we don't like.

Government censorship? Yeah, that always turns out well.

Just checked my local library, as I an just one county away and don't want that filth migrating here. I was happy to see the Bible, a good selection from Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter, The Turner Diaries, The Catcher in the Rye, and Mein Kampf. I was a little surprised that The Diary of Ann Frank and the Koran were also present. I know we don't want our kids being made Jewish or Muslim cause of some book they red.

A couple remarks:

1) It's hard for me to understand from the article just how much, in reality, these complaints were connected to the vote.

2) The remarks about what is in what "section" may be all but meaningless. In the public libraries I'm familiar with, people wander around and take whatever from any section they want. No one stops younger kids from looking at anything, no one stops older kids or adults from going into the kids' room where the Lord of the Rings, or any number of other books of interest to older readers, is kept.

3) The librarians at public libraries are responsible for collection development. Patrons can make suggestions, but in the end, patrons are not in charge of purchasing books for the collection.

4) There is a ton of trash put out for kids and "young adults" these days. I don't even mean sex stuff here, I mean junk rushed out that is useless except maybe as utterly disposable entertainment. Graphic novels: thirty+ years ago, there wasn't much room for "graphic novels" in public libraries. They had little respectability. Since the wild success of a few (like Maus, among others), there is now a race for people with nothing to say and little experience in writing (and drawing) to produce something in a rush to get it out there. Librarians cannot read everything they order for the collection and it is unfortunately what kind of junk ends up on the shelves sometimes (there is also good stuff).

5) There is plenty of sex junk as well, and some young librarians (I speak from personal experience here) are trained to think that some of this stuff is perfectly appropriate for the kids' section.

6) I haven't read "Gender Queer," but I can guess from the samples online that it may as well be a coloring book. No graphic interest in the pages that I have found. Might as well have been designed by a computer. Panel - figures. Panel-figures. Again, I can't be certain, but simply on the basis of its poor art, I would say it is unlikely to be appropriate for a public collection. Naturally, this is just my opinion.

7) The notion that "conversations need to be started" is deceiving. These memoirs (I have read some of this type), regardless of the authors' conscious intent, use the following simple technique: depict a sympathetic character in childhood or adolescence having the same concerns that everyone has (why do I look like this? Why am I not like the other girls / boys? Why is everyone else normal and I am a weirdo?). Then, the magic solution is: the character is gay / trans / genderqueer / whatever.

And there are no or very few memoirs of this type (extremely accessible because they have relatively few words and a lot of graphic content) that do the same for "straight" kids. There isn't a single such memoir out there, that I know of, in the YA graphic novel market that shows a boy or girl suffering from worrying about his / her appearance, who they like or don't like, what they like or don't like, and then the magic solution is...that's just adolescence in our culture! And then they had a "straight" relationship and everything is okay!

So to the 9-13 year-old reader who can absorb one of these books in a public library in about 20 minutes, it's not one of many voices. It's not "a conversation starter." Within that context, it presents being "queer" (as if this is ever defined anyway) as the solution to...the fact that life contains unpleasant experiences.

For whatever reason, the majority of the voters voted not to fund the library further, and those voters (and others) will have to accept the effects they wanted as those they didn't want. So it goes.

There are plenty of books in public collections with gay characters and by authors who consider themselves or would now be considered gay or queer. I am unaware of any significant culture-war kerfuffles around A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence or the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay or Claude McKay.

There are plenty of conversations to be had already. But books in a format so readable it may as well be injectable that present a one-stop shopping solution to the troubles of life are not conversation-starters. They are conversation-stoppers.

A not-bad example of something that isn't pure junk, by an author whose work I am not a big fan of, is Fun Home by openly gay author / cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Yeah, it depicts a sympathetic author-character who is tomboyish and that character does go on to have sexual relationships with other women. Although the character's father is also gay, which the mother explains as a result of his having been sexually abused in childhood. A significant part of the book is not about the character's relationships with women, but about her relationship with her father. And there are "conversations" to be had there, even for those who don't object on moral or religious grounds to the author's identification as a gay woman.

essentialsaltes said:

Voters in Jamestown Township, a politically conservative community in Ottawa County, rejected renewal Tuesday of a millage that would support the Patmos Library. That vote guts the library’s operating budget in 2023 — 84 percent of the library’s $245,000 budget comes from property taxes collected through a millage.

Voters on Tuesday rejected the millage renewal by a 25-point margin — 62 percent to 37 percent — on the same day voters approved millages for road improvements and the fire department.

Earlier this year, a parent raised concerns about the graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” located in the adult graphic novel section. The book tells the story of the author’s coming of age as nonbinary, and includes illustrations of sex acts. [It is still available, but is now kept behind the counter.]

Complaints were filed about several other books, including “Spinning,” a graphic novel about a teen girl and her attraction to other girls, and “Kiss Number 8,” a graphic novel with similar themes. Those books remain on the shelves of the young adult (high-school age) graphic novels section.

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People didn't want to pay additional taxes to fund a library and they voted against the tax? Is that the story?

essentialsaltes said:

Voters in Jamestown Township, a politically conservative community in Ottawa County, rejected renewal Tuesday of a millage that would support the Patmos Library. That vote guts the library’s operating budget in 2023 — 84 percent of the library’s $245,000 budget comes from property taxes collected through a millage.

Voters on Tuesday rejected the millage renewal by a 25-point margin — 62 percent to 37 percent — on the same day voters approved millages for road improvements and the fire department.

Earlier this year, a parent raised concerns about the graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” located in the adult graphic novel section. The book tells the story of the author’s coming of age as nonbinary, and includes illustrations of sex acts. [It is still available, but is now kept behind the counter.]

Complaints were filed about several other books, including “Spinning,” a graphic novel about a teen girl and her attraction to other girls, and “Kiss Number 8,” a graphic novel with similar themes. Those books remain on the shelves of the young adult (high-school age) graphic novels section.

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The greatest threat to Christianity is information.

ruthiesea said:

It’s not a matter of valuing LGBT. It’s a matter of banning books. It’s arbitrary. Maybe defund a library that has books that disagree with your religions or politics. I’m sorry, but it’s a public library and has an obligation to have books, including those people disagree with. It’s called starting conversations.

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You realize that ultimately, somebody in the library is actually making the choice of which books are available.

What is the rationale that particular person should have absolute autonomy to make those choices in a community?

Maybe "head librarian" should be an elected position, like county clerk.

And libraries today do have the option of making books available online that are not housed in their own stacks, you know.

Aryeh Jay said:

I just wonder why they still have libraries, with Conservapedia on the internet, there's no reason to have to read a book.

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But you have to wade though endless internet smut to access this nugget of wholesomeness and truth.

archer75 said:

A couple remarks:

1) It's hard for me to understand from the article just how much, in reality, these complaints were connected to the vote.

2) The remarks about what is in what "section" may be all but meaningless. In the public libraries I'm familiar with, people wander around and take whatever from any section they want. No one stops younger kids from looking at anything, no one stops older kids or adults from going into the kids' room where the Lord of the Rings, or any number of other books of interest to older readers, is kept.

3) The librarians at public libraries are responsible for collection development. Patrons can make suggestions, but in the end, patrons are not in charge of purchasing books for the collection.

4) There is a ton of trash put out for kids and "young adults" these days. I don't even mean sex stuff here, I mean junk rushed out that is useless except maybe as utterly disposable entertainment. Graphic novels: thirty+ years ago, there wasn't much room for "graphic novels" in public libraries. They had little respectability. Since the wild success of a few (like Maus, among others), there is now a race for people with nothing to say and little experience in writing (and drawing) to produce something in a rush to get it out there. Librarians cannot read everything they order for the collection and it is unfortunately what kind of junk ends up on the shelves sometimes (there is also good stuff).

5) There is plenty of sex junk as well, and some young librarians (I speak from personal experience here) are trained to think that some of this stuff is perfectly appropriate for the kids' section.

6) I haven't read "Gender Queer," but I can guess from the samples online that it may as well be a coloring book. No graphic interest in the pages that I have found. Might as well have been designed by a computer. Panel - figures. Panel-figures. Again, I can't be certain, but simply on the basis of its poor art, I would say it is unlikely to be appropriate for a public collection. Naturally, this is just my opinion.

7) The notion that "conversations need to be started" is deceiving. These memoirs (I have read some of this type), regardless of the authors' conscious intent, use the following simple technique: depict a sympathetic character in childhood or adolescence having the same concerns that everyone has (why do I look like this? Why am I not like the other girls / boys? Why is everyone else normal and I am a weirdo?). Then, the magic solution is: the character is gay / trans / genderqueer / whatever.

And there are no or very few memoirs of this type (extremely accessible because they have relatively few words and a lot of graphic content) that do the same for "straight" kids. There isn't a single such memoir out there, that I know of, in the YA graphic novel market that shows a boy or girl suffering from worrying about his / her appearance, who they like or don't like, what they like or don't like, and then the magic solution is...that's just adolescence in our culture! And then they had a "straight" relationship and everything is okay!

So to the 9-13 year-old reader who can absorb one of these books in a public library in about 20 minutes, it's not one of many voices. It's not "a conversation starter." Within that context, it presents being "queer" (as if this is ever defined anyway) as the solution to...the fact that life contains unpleasant experiences.

For whatever reason, the majority of the voters voted not to fund the library further, and those voters (and others) will have to accept the effects they wanted as those they didn't want. So it goes.

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How are you quote "Maus" as a positive example? That filfth has half a nipple in it!

Nithavela said:

How are you quote "Maus" as a positive example? That filfth has half a nipple in it!

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I didn't mention it as a positive example, although I do think Maus is a worthwhile work.

I meant to mention Maus as an example of something that was popular and considered "respectable" in the last 30 years, that helped to get words-and-pictures books for adults into libraries.

RDKirk said:

You realize that ultimately, somebody in the library is actually making the choice of which books are available.

What is the rationale that particular person should have absolute autonomy to make those choices in a community?

Maybe "head librarian" should be an elected position, like county clerk.

And libraries today do have the option of making books available online that are not housed in their own stacks, you know.

Click to expand...

It often happens even in some non-huge public libraries that there is a children's librarian, and sometimes even a YA librarian (sometimes part-time, or shared between two libraries). Those in such positions often are expected to manage the collections basically on their own.

It's not an easy task these days, even with the best motivations. No one can read everything in the library, and certainly not every book that could be purchased for the library. Children's librarians are under social pressure to have "new" books, and almost by definitely, the new books available aren't books they've ever seen before. The markets are packed with stuff that is either technically junk (bad illustrations, bad design, poor binding, bad writing) or has a degree of sexual / suggestive content that you could never have found in a YA or children's section even 20 years ago.

essentialsaltes said:

Voters in Jamestown Township, a politically conservative community in Ottawa County, rejected renewal Tuesday of a millage that would support the Patmos Library. That vote guts the library’s operating budget in 2023 — 84 percent of the library’s $245,000 budget comes from property taxes collected through a millage.

Voters on Tuesday rejected the millage renewal by a 25-point margin — 62 percent to 37 percent — on the same day voters approved millages for road improvements and the fire department.

Earlier this year, a parent raised concerns about the graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” located in the adult graphic novel section. The book tells the story of the author’s coming of age as nonbinary, and includes illustrations of sex acts. [It is still available, but is now kept behind the counter.]

Complaints were filed about several other books, including “Spinning,” a graphic novel about a teen girl and her attraction to other girls, and “Kiss Number 8,” a graphic novel with similar themes. Those books remain on the shelves of the young adult (high-school age) graphic novels section.

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This is a good example of fanatical partisanship. Books are not the enemy.
Blessings.

Yup. I had a friend that taught library science and one of the things he had them do as an assignment is look up inappropriate content requests.

The library is supposed to provide free access to information.

dzheremi said:

Does the freedom to read include being able to access graphic depictions of sex acts from a public library?

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archer75 said:

I didn't mention it as a positive example, although I do think Maus is a worthwhile work.

I meant to mention Maus as an example of something that was popular and considered "respectable" in the last 30 years, that helped to get words-and-pictures books for adults into libraries.

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It's not worthwhile, it's smut. Basically hardcore inappropriate contentography the liberal left is forcing on our children! Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?!

essentialsaltes said:

In addition to their own resources, training, and judgment, librarians have professional organizations and publications that help provide reviews for new books.

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This is certainly true, but it is still a big job.