An Illinois plan for ending book bans? Republican senators aren’t on board

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias came to testify before Congress Tuesday, eager to defend librarians and to discourage book bans. It took just over an hour for a Republican senator to say librarians were “grooming” children.

The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was intended to look at a “right to read” law that Giannoulias pushed through the Illinois legislature this spring and is touting as a model for other states navigating a rise in book challenges. The law requires local library systems to promise not to remove reading materials because of partisan or personal reasons, in order to qualify for state grants.

The discussion comes as the number of attempts to ban or restrict library materials hit a record high in 2022, according to the American Library Association. The group documented 1,269 efforts to restrict access to library books last year, the most since ALA began keeping track 20 years ago. That dwarfed the previous record of 729 requests, which was set in 2021. Several Republican-controlled states including Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Texas and Utah have recently passed laws restricting access to books in schools and libraries.

PEN America, a group of professional writers that fights efforts to ban books, found that 30% of the titles targeted for removal in schools were about race, racism or people of color. It found more than a quarter of the contested books have LGBTQ characters or themes.

“Our libraries have become targets by a movement that disingenuously claims to pursue freedom, but is instead promoting authoritarianism. Authoritarian regimes ban books, not democracies,” said Giannoulias, a Democrat who assumed office in January. The Illinois secretary of state serves as the state librarian, and Giannoulias previously served on the board of directors of the Chicago Public Library.

“Tragically, our libraries have become the ThunderDome of controversy and strife across our nation, the likes of which we’ve never seen before. These radical attacks on our libraries have divided our communities. And our librarians have been harassed, threatened and intimidated for simply doing their jobs,” he added.

But U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the panel, told Giannoulias that parents and local residents should hold school and library officials accountable for the choices they make with the books and resources they offer.

“A public library is supported by public dollars,” Graham told the Illinois official. “Are you telling the taxpayers of this country to shut up? … Is it possible that the books in question may hurt the community in the eyes of the parents? Can a parent—a taxpayer—complain under this theory?”

Giannoulias said he would let parents decide what their own kids could read, but he didn’t want other parents or angry local residents deciding what his kids should be allowed to check out or read from their school library.

Emily Knox, a University of Illinois information sciences professor and chair of the National Coalition Against Censorship, told Graham that nearly all libraries have established processes to allow parents or other community members to object to books or offer other suggestions. “What’s important to remember,” she said, “is that this is a collective decision. It’s not just one person who gets to say what’s in the library.”

But Graham and other Republican senators chafed at the idea that those decisions should be made jointly. “Somebody has to decide,” he said. Residents shouldn’t sit back and trust their local library or school systems to decide what is best for their community. “I totally reject that. If I don’t have kids, should I shut up? I pay taxes. When you have a public library and you have a board, somebody decides what books go in and what ones don’t go in. Lend your voice to the cause. It’s OK to speak out for your community.”

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, accused librarians of trying to “sexualize children.”

He showed a clip of Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, discussing how to talk to the public about efforts to restrict access to library books. Caldwell-Stone said advocates need to “reframe” the issue to move away “from the idea that these are … sexually inappropriate for minors and promote them as diverse materials and programming that are about inclusion, fairness and protection of everybody’s right to see themselves and their families reflected in the books at their public library.”

The video, Lee claimed, “is someone saying the quiet part out loud, acknowledging what the goal is.”

“‘This is not about sexually explicit content. This is about equality. This is about justice. This is about what's right and wrong. This has nothing to do with sex,’” Lee said, paraphrasing Caldwell-Stone. “Well, of course, that’s what someone would do if they were grooming your child, if someone were trying to sexualize your child. And make no mistake, that is what's happening.”

Some of the material at issue is graphic enough that providing it to a child or reading it to a child could be considered a crime in some jurisdictions, Lee continued. “These school districts are acting in response to legitimate parental concerns. They should be removing these. Shame on them if they don’t. And shame on those who want to groom children sexually.”

But Cameron Samuels, a Texas student and the executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, told the senators that “nearly all” the books being removed from their school district in Katy were targeted because they explored issues of identity. Samuels, who uses they/them pronouns, said they were concerned when the local school district started to challenge the inclusion of Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman exploring the Holocaust. The book is important in a place where many students cannot name a single Jewish person and some even deny the Holocaust.

“Books like Maus teach students an accurate reflection of Jewish identity,” said Samuels, who is Jewish. “If a classmate of mine knew the real extent of the Holocaust, maybe they would have thought twice about their actions. Maybe they would have thought twice about spraying cologne in my face. He said he was ‘gassing the Jew.’”

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, also recalled the importance of having a diverse set of books at the school library, when he grew up as one of the only Black students at an overwhelmingly white high school. “They were anchors to me. Lifelines,” he said. “At a time that I was forming my self-concept and my sense of self-worth, these were the books that became the foundation of who I am. They are some of the greatest works of American literature.”

His parents could have bought books like the autobiography of Frederick Douglass for Booker to read at home, but the important thing was that the books were in the school library for his classmates to read, Booker said.

“I remember the power of reading Invisible Man in my high school English class and the impact it had on my peers,” he said. It expanded their understanding of what Black people in America went through.

Knox, the Illinois professor, who is Black, noted that for most of U.S. history, she would not be able to testify before Congress. “It is important that people know we have a history of trauma in our country, that we have overcome that for some people. We gain nothing by not telling our children the truth of genocide, slavery and Jim Crow,” she said. “People want to say it was all in the past or, even if it was all in the past, it’s too painful to discuss. It may be painful, but it’s still the truth.”

At one point, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, read a lengthy passage from the book All Boys Aren’t Blue, George Johnson’s memoir that explores their identity as a Black LGBTQ kid growing up in New Jersey and Virginia. Johnson has said the book is intended for 14- to 18-year-olds.

The scene Kennedy chose describes a same-sex sexual encounter in explicit detail. He also read aloud an excerpt from Gender Queer, a graphic memoir from Maia Kobabe, detailing some of the author’s sexual fantasies.

“Mr. Secretary,” an indignant Kennedy asked Giannoulias, “What are you asking us to do? Are you suggesting that only librarians should decide whether the two books that I just referenced should be available to kids?”

“I’m saying when individual parents are allowed to make a decision of where that line is … it becomes a slippery slope,” he said.

Kennedy also turned to Samuels, the Texas student, to see whether they would ban the two books Kennedy read from. Samuels told the senator that students, parents and educators should determine what was on the shelves.

Samuels explained that All Boys Aren’t Blue included scenes of sexual abuse. “It’s not erotic.”

“I know what it’s about,” Kennedy shot back. “What would you do in terms of making the books available?”

“Students who do not read books like All Boys Aren’t Blue cannot learn about what it is like…” Samuels responded before Kennedy cut them off.

The first sexual encounter that Johnson wrote about in All Boys Aren’t Blue was a cousin abusing them when they were 13.