photo by florian.b on flickr
As we approach the beginning of Banned Books Week, I am astounded to hear Mitchell Muncy, former editor of Spence Publishing and current operating officer for the Institute of American Values, trying to “shush” the American Library Association. According to Muncy in his opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, the ALA is making too big a deal over nothing, exaggerating numbers of banned and challenged books by a parental force that is merely attempting to “guide their children’s education.” Muncy further asserts that censorship cannot originate from non-governmental parties, that censorship is not really censorship if interested parties can still obtain the book through Amazon.com, and that librarians are the true censors for stifling the demands of concerned parents who are just trying to do what is best for children.
It is evident that Mr. Muncy finds Banned Books Week irrelevant–at best. He also seems to find the week’s activities to be confrontational and antagonistic. He’s not the only one. A number of groups have recently been speaking out against the ideas set forth in the ALA’s and AAP’s “Freedom to Read” statement. This statement, originally written in 1953 in the midst of the McCarthy era, asserts that an individual’s freedom to determine what he or she reads is essential to our democracy. It continues by stating that the individual is the best determinant of what reading material is right for them, and that this personal liberty should not be usurped by others claiming to know what is best for the population at large.
The “Freedom to Read” statement has been revised a number of times since the initial draft, and other publishing and anti-censorship organizations have also endorsed it. It would seem, after the McCarthy era, that the need for this statement would have dwindled somewhat. Not so. While the government may not be leading recent attacks on books, a sudden surge of challenges to books in schools, libraries and bookstores led to the creation of Banned Books week back in 1982.
So what happens during Banned Books Week that makes it so controversial? Well–authors and others read from these banned books. They also talk about why some of these books were challenged in our schools, libraries and bookstores. And participants restate their belief in the freedom to read. That’s it. But this is too much for Muncy and others including the Family Friendly Libraries organization and Parents Against Bad Books In Schools (PABBIS).
Family Friendly Libraries is a national organization formed to address what they see as the growing problem of pornography and age-inappropriate materials found in our school and public libraries. They provide lists and resources for individuals to use in their fight to remove offensive practices and/or offensive items from libraries. They are also against Banned Book Week, stating in a 1998 press release,
“It is and has always been a negative event. The ALA uses that campaign to attack concerned parents and other citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights in behalf of their children and community. The ALA says it wants parental involvement, but negative opinions about library materials send member librarians into absurd public claims of ‘censorship,’ intimidating many parents from expressing their honest opinions” (Gounaud, 1998).
Were parents simply trying to regulate what their child reads, there may not be an issue. More often, when challenges to books arise at a school or in a public library, parents and other concerned citizens are asking that the item be removed for all readers. With different individuals having different interpretations of what is objectionable, how can one know if a book should truly be removed from circulation? Parents Against Bad Books In Schools believes they have the answer. They state on their website that,
“Bad is not for us to determine. Bad is what you determine is bad. Bad is what you think is bad for your child. What each parent considers bad varies and depends on their unique situation, family and values. The main purpose of this webpage is to identify some books that might be considered bad and why someone might consider them bad. Another purpose of this webpage is to provide information related to bad books in schools.”
FFL and PABBIS supposedly believe that libraries should be governed by community standards, yet they are national organizations that encourage others to question books within their libraries. PABBIS evens goes so far as to list possibly offensive books along with offensive excerpts. Muncy, in his Wall Street Journal article, claims that the ALA is “reacting so zealously against a few unorganized, law-abiding parents whose efforts, by any sensible standard, are hopelessly ineffective.” Ineffective or not, there is often a larger national presence at work in many of these cases, making the push to remove items from library shelves a bit more sinister. A recent move by a San Jose city councilman to impose filters on library computers was backed by the financing and legal department of the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona based organization that states on its website it is “fighting for religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and marriage and the family.” While the Alliance Defense Fund, Family Friendly Libraries, and Parents Against Bad Books in Schools are certainly within their rights to enter the debate, it is no longer only a community issue.
Mitchell Muncy asserts that if a book is banned in a public library or in a school, and not banned by the government as a whole, it is not censorship. He feels that if a person could obtain the book from an online bookseller, then it is still accessible. Many patrons who are turning to the library for their reading material are doing so because they cannot afford to purchase items themselves. If an item is removed from the library, it is inaccessible for them and therefore amounts to censorship. But Muncy’s main point in his attack against Banned Books Week seems to be that most of the books were not really banned, just challenged. If Banned Books Week did not exist and if the American Library Association did not believe in the freedom to read, many of those challenges might have been more successful. It is only through continued vigilance that these challenges to books in our libraries can be defeated before they become, in Muncy’s definition, truly banned.
Were Muncy and others to have their way, they would do away with ALA involvement in any library. In a statement titled “What FFL Truly IS and IS NOT“, Family Friendly Libraries exclaims that they “support libraries in their efforts to sever financial ties with the ALA and remove documents such as the “ALA Bill of Rights” from their local library policies.” If the first step for these groups is the removal of the Library Bill of Rights, will the next target be the First Amendment?
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