ALA President/ALA OIF called out on LYING/MISLEADING

Superior homework on the part of SafeLibraries.

The following is my response to American Library Association [ALA] President Jim Rettig and the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom Acting Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone regarding the matter in West Bend, WI.

"....in the past, Ms. Caldwell-Stone said, "There are times when a book might be moved, for example a young adult novel makes it into a fourth or fifth classroom and that's more appropriate for the high school library, and a committee can just say this was an inappropriate book to buy for this age group but it was an appropriate book to buy for this age category and it works for this high school library." Listen to the Deborah Caldwell-Stone say this in her own voice by clicking on the link located at "Deborah Caldwell-Stone Discusses Banned Books", by admin, American Library Association, 11 July 2008.Now my reading of that tells me that there are times when a book might be moved for reasons of age appropriateness. Yes, the context was a public school library, but the same principle applies, and the speaker was Deborah Caldwell-Stone herself."

"On the other hand, it is Deborah Caldwell-Stone who herself is being misleading. She says, for instance, "The ALA opposes book banning and censorship in any form, including censorship that arises from disagreement with and disapproval of positive GLBT materials." While outwardly true, the whole truth is that no book has been banned for many decades in the USA. I'm talking about banned, not moved for reasons of age appropriateness. Bd of Educ. v. Pico says the parties stipulate that pervasively vulgar material may be removed from public schools immediately. US v. ALA, a big loss for the ALA and the ACLU, saw the Court say, "The interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling, as all Members of the Court appear to agree." Did Ms. Caldwell-Stone tell you about that? Does the US Supreme Court make book banning and censorship the law of the land? No and no. See also "LISNews Disses Judith Krug Unwittingly" for how the ALA, indeed the very Office for Intellectual Freedom Caldwell-Stone leads, misleads the public on the issue of censorship just as she is doing here on this Queery blog post.She misleads the public another way, but it may be innocently. Other than what she said about me that I proved was incorrect, the remainder of her comments addressed themselves not to the issues, but to a nonissue. The issue of "GLBT materials" is a nonissue because the proponent of the changes in the library has long ago (relatively speaking) dropped her claims regarding GLBT materials and has since requested only legal means for protecting children from inappropriate material in her own public library. That's the issue now. Legal means for protecting children. Deborah Caldwell-Stone did not address that issue. Why? My guess is that she knows they are legal and there actually are no arguments for not applying legal means to protect children. Hence the reliance on the out-of-date GLBT claims."