It's the latest culture war clash over books dealing with race and sexuality.
“We will try this in the courts, not through social media or through news media,” said Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who presides over the commissioners court and is one of the defendants in a lawsuit filed a year ago by library patrons.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said this was the first incidence she was aware of in which officials moved to consider closing a system altogether. One of the new library board members is Bonnie Wallace, who was among those speaking at Thursday’s meeting. Wallace, who said there were over 200 additional books she thinks should be banned, was among those who read aloud explicit sex scenes from books they said were currently on the shelves.
“It’s not our job to burn this thing to the ground to prevent kids from reading what these people are reading,” said Arno, referring to explicit material read aloud at the meeting. “It’s the parents’ job to know what their kids are into.”“The demands that we’re seeing are to remove books that reflect the lives and experiences of LGBTQIA persons or reflect the lives and experiences of persons of color, in particular Black persons,” she said.
“These are books that we have found over the years appeal particularly to young male readers and are really great tools for encouraging early literacy and a love of reading,” Caldwell-Stone said.
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