Leaders of libraries and the American Library Association criticized book bans as a “death knell for democracy” during interviews with CBS News on Sunday.
Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich told CBS’s Martha Teichner that they don’t want kids exposed to books with pornography.
“Books that don’t have pornography in them, let’s start there. Let’s just put the bar really, really low. Books that don’t have incest, pedophilia, rape,” Justice said in response to a question about what books they believe should be in schools and libraries.
The outlet also interviewed The Brooklyn Public Library’s president and CEO Linda Johnson and former teacher Summer Boismier, who works with the Brooklyn Public Library’s “Books Unbanned” program.
“I am incensed. I’m livid. I am not heartbroken. Identities are not obscenities. Stories are not pornography. They are possibility,” Boismier told CBS.
Johnson explained “Books Unbanned,” which is an initiative their library launched in response to “an increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books tackling a wide range of topics from library shelves,” according to their website.
“What we ended up doing was issuing a countrywide press release that said, ‘If you’re between the ages of 13 and 21, and you can’t find the material that you want to read on the shelves of your school or your public library, send us an email, and we will send you a digital card which will give you access to our digital collection,'” Johnson told Teichner.
She suggested book bans were like a “death knell for democracy.” According to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans, there were 1,477 instances of individual books banned during the first half of the 2022-23 school year.
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“It sounds melodramatic but, you know, to do something which inhibits intellectual curiosity is like a death knell for democracy,” Johnson said.
“Moms for Liberty” also claimed CBS did not show the “porn images” from books they shared with the outlet.
“Looks like they are the ones banning the truth of what is actually being fought about in public schools,” the group posted on Twitter. Fox News Digital has reached out to CBS News for comment.
“Tina and I gave Martha Teichner and her producer the images and texts from the books that Moms and Dads are concerned about in school libraries,” Justice expanded. “Why did you not show them?”
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, told Teichner that books “deemed to be critical race theory, but were actually books on the history of race, racism, slavery in the United States, or representing Black voices, were overwhelmingly being targeted by these demands to remove books.”
The American Library Association is preparing to announce a list of the “Most Challenged Books of 2022” on Monday, CBS reported.
“It is a graphic novel, so certainly it’s more in-your-face,” Caldwell-Stone said of the book, “Gender-Queer” by Maia Kobabe. “But it’s not intended to titillate; it’s intended to provide a window into one person’s experience, not knowing their gender identity and needing to explore that.”
Fox News Digital’s Joshua Nelson contributed to this report.
