Public libraries are supposed to be for everyone. They are a government-sponsored institution for the curating and borrowing of books, as well as a source of knowledge open for the use of anybody wise enough to take advantage of its contents.

Over the years, however, the library has also become a community space with rooms that are available for people to read to children or host other community events. Lately, this public space has been infiltrated by drag queens to read LGBTQ+ and other books to kids. Moreover, librarians determine how government stipends are to be used in terms of the books they buy, and some of those resources have been used to incorporate a children’s book written by the Satanic Temple.

Let’s just say this is not the idea of liberalism put forward by the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin, an avid bibliophile, helped start the first library in the American colonies in 1731. Many of the first books in that library were religious or educational — think philosophers like John Locke or Plutarch. Franklin was also alive in a day and age when the discussion of ideas could be polarizing. Not every colonist wanted to split with England in 1776. However, there was a consensus that an educated people was a better sort of citizenry. Ideas about morality and politics are better discussed when both parties are well informed. It helps us answer why we believe what we believe.

Today’s American Library Association (ALA) seems to be run by “progressives” intent on letting bad messages be showcased in their houses of learning and silencing other voices such as conservative Christians. Instead of pushing patrons toward higher thinking, they instead give children and young adults books that push left-wing agenda items in their most palatable form (which is to say, euphemisms and sometimes outright lies).

Kirk Cameron, former actor and current Christian author, has been on a mission to balance out the infiltration of Drag Queen Story Hour in public libraries. He and the Brave Books team have created books with positive content and good moral teaching, and the authors of the various books, such as Cameron, have been going to libraries and reading them aloud. It’s an opportunity for Christian parents to feel comfortable taking their child to a story hour without fear that the content might be offensive to them and their beliefs.

It is because of this bold counteraction to Drag Queen Story Hour that the ALA has taken steps to try to ban readers like Kirk Cameron from coming to libraries. The ALA has disseminated to librarians ways to block or sabotage parents who invite conservative voices to the libraries and avoid legal battles over First Amendment violations. It was Deborah Caldwell Stone, one of the directors of the ALA, giving this advice. The ALA’s argument for blocking Brave Books and Kirk Cameron is that these Christians are creating a security risk. For who? Well, drag queens and others who disagree with the conservative messaging. Why are drag queens so threatened? Well, because their worldview is indefensible and easily uncovered for the utter nonsense that it is.

These actions by the ALA are disturbing but sadly not surprising. The ALA last spring elected a self-proclaimed lesbian Marxist as its president. When Ben Franklin extolled the virtues of the library, he proclaimed, “These Libraries have improved the general Conversation of Americans, made the common Tradesmen and Farmers as intelligent as most Gentlemen from other Countries, and perhaps have contributed in some Degree to the Stand so generally made throughout the Colonies in Defence of their Priviledges.”

How is one improved by drag queens reading about sexual orientation to children (diversity, pride, disordered thinking)? How is one improved by having a Satanic Temple children’s book available for checkout (promoting a religion that has long been the antithesis of all that is good and true)? How is one not improved by being taught good and patriotic lessons?

Promoting well-written, constructive, classical, and informative books is what a healthy society would do. Sadly, the ALA is part of the continual rot both intellectually and morally.

Libraries are for everyone, and if the ALA weren’t such a partisan hack, it might be part of the solution instead of yet another problem.