Queering the Catalog

The Openly Radicalized American Library Association

Background

The American Library Association (ALA) was founded during the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world and is publicly funded. Its stated mission is “to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.”

The ALA has pursued that mission by opening libraries and working to increase access to books for children, military personnel at home and abroad, and African Americans. Its first children’s story hour was initiated in 1882.

Reason for Surveillance

In 1970, the ALA founded its “Task Force on Gay Liberation”—later named the Rainbow Round Table (RRT)—as “the nation’s first gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender professional organization.” In 1971, ALA began sponsoring annual Gay Book Awards for gay-themed books. These awards, along with RRT’s annual Rainbow Book List, in effect provide public libraries with a shopping list for book titles that would otherwise have remained obscure. The 2023 list contains nearly 200 recommended books for “young readers from birth to age 18 . . . an array of diverse stories and identities representing the LGBTQIA+ youth experience.” RRT’s mission, then, appears to be to stock library shelves with sex-themed materials for children at taxpayers’ expense.

In the face of public pushback against the role of libraries in exposing children to sexually explicit content, the ALA doubled down in 2022 by electing a self-described “Marxist lesbian” as its president. When asked about legislative action taken in Idaho and several other states to keep sexually explicit materials out of libraries, Idaho native and ALA president-elect Emily Drabinski insisted, “There’s no big library agenda.” Instead, as ALA president she wants to provide librarians with the tools they need to organize locally.

Most Egregious Offense

We can infer what Drabinski means by examining her written work on the “politics of knowledge organization” and her history of LGBTQIA+ activism in her role as a librarian. In a 2013 academic article, for example, entitled “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction,” she argues that the current heteronormative classification system in libraries reflects prejudice and fails to “accurately and respectfully organize library materials about social groups and identities that lack social and political power.” To overturn this system of oppression (“oppressive” because it excludes her), she argues for “queering the catalog [as] queer theory informs new strategies for teaching the library catalog from a queer perspective.”¹ In a 2021 YouTube video titled “Teaching the Radical Catalog,” Drabinski elaborates on her strategy of teaching librarians how to leverage their roles as information gatekeepers and to subvert the idea that there are “normal family types.”²

Empowering librarians then, means organizing the library and its catalog in a way that directs patrons to materials promoting queer and Marxist thought. Since the Marxist revolutions of the past have sought to incite sexual chaos and abolish the nuclear family, we should not be surprised to find that a queer Marxist would use her power to sexualize children and alienate them from their parents.

Library story hour has come a long way since 1882.

Notes
1. Drabinski, Emily. “Queering the catalog: Queer theory and the politics of correction,” The Library Quarterly 83, no. 2 (2013): 98, 109.
2. Pullman, Joy. “Amid Public Concern About Grooming Kids, American Library Association Picks President Who Pushes ‘Queering’ Libraries,” The Federalist, April 22, 2022.