LGBTQ+ allies defeated book banners in two contentious library meetings

Free-speech advocates defeated anti-LGBTQ+ book banners in two showdowns in Colorado and Arizona this week.

In Colorado, the board of trustees for Douglas County Libraries voted to keep four contested LGBTQ+ books on the shelves after a standing-room-only debate over the books’ appropriateness for readers under the age of 18.

Related:

Community bands together & shuts down LGBTQ+ book-banning effort

After the board voted against the proposal, hundreds applauded their decision.

The books under contention were the children’s picture book The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish; the Black queer coming-of-age memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue; the teen resource title This Book is Gay; and the young adult mystery Jack of Hearts. Though the last three titles include mentions of sex, none include explicit sexual scenes.

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Nonetheless, resident Aaron Wood filed four appeals looking to get the books removed from shelves.

“I’m not out to demonize a particular community and, honestly, I believe this has a disadvantage for the LGBT community, because I would be opposed to heterosexual content that would put sexual perversion or sexual acts in front of children,” Wood told KDVR.

The state LGBTQ+ organization One Colorado said that it would continue to monitor state book-banning debates “to ensure that access to diverse communities through books.”

Meanwhile, in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, pro-LGBTQ+ free speech advocates vastly outnumbered anti-LGBTQ+ protestors in a Monday night meeting of the Rio Rancho Public Library.

The anti-LGBTQ+ group New Mexico Mass Resistance had published a tweet encouraging people to attend the meeting. The tweet included an image of two figures having anal sex and the following message: “The American Library Association (ALA) wants to destroy the heterosexual nuclear family…. Stop being afraid of evil. Speak the truth.

Mass Resistance has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group has accused LGBTQ+ activists of “pushing perversion on our kids” and “trying to get legislation passed to allow sex with animals.” Anti-LGBTQ+ conservative groups have opposed the ALA, claiming that it supports child access to “pornography” in libraries and schools.

Though the library hadn’t planned to discuss censorship at its meeting, all 20 speakers made public comments against book banning, KOB-TV reported.

“The books [Mass Resistance] may not want their children to read, I might want my children to read. So they can certainly control it at home, but they shouldn’t restrict these books, and make choices for everybody about what books people should read or not read,” said Willie Orr, a member of the progressive political group Indivisible Albuquerque.

Anti-LGBTQ+ book-banning advocates attended a Rio Rancho City Council meeting in April 2023. At the time, council members reminded citizens that they could fill out a “request for reconsideration” form to challenge any books on library shelves.

However, Jason Shoup, Rio Rancho’s director of Library and Information Services, told the aforementioned news station, “We have not had a single one of those requests in this calendar year. We have not seen a single one.”

In the United States, bans on LGBTQ+ books are “escalating dramatically,” according to the free-speech organization PEN America. The bans have largely come from Republican politicians, conservative school boards, and so-called “parents’ rights” groups that have opposed such content as “woke indoctrination” that’s “inappropriate” for school children.