The other page in the library debate
There is a bit more below the surface regarding the debate of the Indian Valley Public Library’s recent funding cuts.
The March 8th letter to the editor conflates issues involving the Indian Valley Public Library (IVPL) with issues regarding the borough’s budgeting priorities in an effort to sanitize extremist beliefs. On one hand, the author goes into detail about the need for more police, a perspective I and many others share as residents of the borough. We do need to ensure that our police department is adequately funded and staffed to meet the needs of our community.
On the other hand, at the last Borough Council meeting, the author advocated for a “pause in funding” for the IVPL until Telford is given a permanent seat on the library’s Board of Trustees. For the record, Telford already has representation on the Board of Trustees, as do all other municipalities that provide funding to the library. Our representative has lived in Telford for decades, generously volunteers her time and routinely attends council meetings to provide updates to the council and community.
It is such a shame that institutions such as our public libraries and public schools, those that prepare and educate our leaders of the future, have become ground zero for GOP-led culture wars. Local library advocates have been concerned about threats to defund the IVPL since former Telford Borough Councilman Miles Arnott voiced concerns about the Library’s 2021 Pride display. IVPL featured a small selection of LGBTQ+-themed age-appropriate children’s books as part of a national campaign led by the American Library Association to celebrate authors and writers that reflect the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community.
Arnott raised these concerns in July and August of 2021 and clearly stated these issues would be taken into consideration when planning borough budgets in the future. A leaked email from an unnamed “Bucks councilman”, later confirmed to be Councilman Jacobus, posted on social media in January made clear his intent to defund the “Indian Valley Library ($70k ish) if they keep evangelizing for trans agenda and LGBTQ…”.
Jacobus was appointed by the council to complete Arnott’s term after his resignation in the fall of 2022. Given these details, coupled with a lack of public-facing documentation outlining the financial requirements of the police department that would have necessitated the shift in funding from the library, it is very hard not to draw a straight line from these comments and efforts directly to the recent move by council to not only reduce the funding of the library, but fully change the funding model of the IVPL altogether.
To further expand on the report that Councilman Jacobus prepared, I was able to review this document and the content he references. The examples he highlighted were all young adult graphic novels by authors in the LGBTQ+ community, which would certainly not be located in the children’s section of a library, and, to my knowledge, are not hitchhiking their way home with our kids. It is worth noting that there were no books depicting heterosexual relationships found on his list, whereas I’m relatively certain that those books, too, exist in the library.
Libraries that allow censorship of constitutionally protected speech are in violation of the First Amendment. The American Library Association states, “Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents — and only parents — have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children — and only their children — to library resources.” Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr wrote in Texas V. Johnson: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
The ask to put books in a locked area defeats the purpose of making a wide-range of literature available to a community by stigmatizing not only the content, but also the audience who wishes to access it. Once we start this practice, where does it stop? And who determines which works are palatable and which aren’t? While those looking to ban or restrict the books available in our libraries paint parents, and by extension their children, as helpless victims, few if any, seem to call out the responsibility of parents to monitor the various media they allow their children to access. Even so, while parents have the right to guide their children’s reading, access to literature for all should not be limited, censored, or restricted based on the beliefs of a few.