The Oconee County Library Board of Trustees has denied its latest wave of requests to reclassify books with LGBTQ, inclusive and related themes from “young adult” or “juvenile” into the adult section of the library.
Meeting Jan. 8 for the first time in the library’s new location in the Wire Park mixed use development (though the library at the former Anaconda Wire and Cable factory site won’t be open to the public until about Feb. 3), board members denied the four reshelving requests without discussion in near-unanimous votes.
Board member Matt Stephens, principal of Oconee Middle School, was the only dissenting vote on three of the books, but joined the others in deciding not to put Tomboy by Liz Prince in the library’s adult section. According to one reviewer, the book is an “entertaining, clever and genuinely funny memoir of growing up with gender identity confusion.”
Three other challenged books also won’t be moving: Different Kinds of Fruit by Kyle Lukoff, a story built around a sixth-grader’s learning that her father is trans, according to a publisher’s blurb; Cory McCarthy’s Man o’War, an “achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans teen fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town,” according to its publisher; and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, a graphic novel that “[touches] gently but powerfully on topics of bullying, homophobia and toxic relationships,” according to a Booklist review; Kirkus called it “a triumphant queer coming-of-age story that will make your heart ache and soar.”
The four removal requests brought to 10 the number of such requests the library board, appointed by local governments and the school board, has ruled on in its past three meetings. The board approved one request in a July meeting and two more (of five requests) in October, in each case going against the recommendations of librarians that the books not be reclassified to adult.
Athens Regional Library System Executive Director Valerie Bell said the system can only handle five such requests per quarter system-wide because of time and staffing limitations.
The Oconee County Library and its branch in Bogart are part of the regional system, which also includes public libraries in Oglethorpe, Madison and Clarke counties and the towns of Royston and Lavonia.
In Monday’s meeting, the board accepted the librarians’ judgment and the decision of the board’s own book review committee.
Before the votes, board chair Mark Campbell outlined the process when a citizen requests a book be removed or reclassified. A librarian with a graduate degree first reviews the book and creates a review packet; a committee of librarians then reviews the packet, reads the book and makes a recommendation; then passes it on to the library board’s Book Action Committee, which also reads the book and reviews the packet before making a recommendation to the full board of trustees, which has the final say. The Oconee board’s decisions don’t apply to any other libraries, Campbell said.
About three dozen people watched Monday’s proceedings, and about a third of them spoke for or against the removal requests during a public input period that lasted about half an hour. It was a much smaller crowd than the 200 who packed an Oconee Library Board meeting last July, when the group Moms for Liberty brought its right-wing campaign to the library.
That organization was founded in 2021 to oppose COVID measures such as mask and vaccine mandates. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is a “far-right extremist group” that advocates banning books about people of color and the LGBTQ community in a “narrative that children are being indoctrinated and sexualized through a radical ‘Marxist’ agenda.”
Julie Mauck, chair of the Oconee Moms for Liberty chapter, was the last to speak in Monday’s meeting, and said the requests were not part of an anti-LGBTQ campaign, despite the nature of the challenged books. “Nobody here is challenging LGBTQ content. It’s not about that,” Mauck said. “We’re debating sexually explicit material, whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual does not matter.”
Moms for Liberty has had its own sexually explicit issues lately. One of the group’s Florida founders, Sarasota Board of Education member Bridget Ziegler, last month admitted to a three-way sex encounter with her husband, former Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler, and another woman. The other woman in that encounter has alleged that Christian Ziegler later raped her after Bridget Ziegler opted out of another three-way. Earlier this month Florida Republicans replaced Christian Ziegler as party chair as police continue their investigation.
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