Library Board Staff Ranked in the Left’s WOKE Clericy? 

This past Tuesday, June 6th, the Warren County Board of Supervisors met.   Hundreds of Warren County citizens turned out, the vast majority concerned about the Library policy of including books in the children’s and Young Adults’ sections with sexual themes and the budget that funds those purchases.   Predictably and broadly, the people lined up with one of two positions:  it’s fine that the books are there, or they shouldn’t be there.  Some of those who were for the books remaining seemed to be under the impression that a mere 53 people wanted them gone, while they themselves were at least potentially representing the entire rest of the county, numbered 40,000.  Meanwhile, adding both sides, the attendants remained in the hundreds.

The criteria for including the books are conveniently amorphous: the American Library Association (ALA)  has approved them; the Library staff has opted to shelve them.  We are reminded that the Library Staff cannot possibly be expected to review all of the books curated for their shelves, including those that children will pick up.

The ALA is a convenient reference point for the Samuels staff because it protects the public image of objective professionalism.  The books in question, recommended by the ALA, encourage children and teens to think about sexual themes: quite explicitly in some cases. The supporters of the books were quick to point out that opponents had isolated as objectionable only a few passages in the books, but those speakers didn’t bother the audience with them.  That disagreeable task was left to the “other side,” and people on both sides in the room sat in embarrassed silence.

At best, those who promote these books to the young are blind to the turbulence produced in children by premature exposure to sexual themes.  Sex is a tremendous mystery, and everyone knows it, including children,  when they encounter knowledge of it. But mystery be damned: the real thing is exposure, exposure, and more exposure.    People who want to expose children to sex know how reactive children are to sexual innuendo or to more explicit sexual themes.   People who have an interest in stimulating children sexually use this sensitivity, which all of us possess to a greater or lesser degree, like a button: to destroy,  gradually or quickly, a child’s self-protective instinct of sexual privacy and boundary. Thirty years ago, most people thought that people entrusted with the public good should not enable people to arouse children’s interest in sex; commonly, such people were termed creeps.  But very creepy people have cleverly changed that consensus, which now no longer exists.  Moreover, the standards of the Library Board seem to be curiously sacred to those who think the books should remain.  “Congratulations” to the Library Board: they have been set up as professional, objective people whose decisions are sacrosanct.  It couldn’t have happened even thirty years ago, but that was before Library Boards and their counterparts in the Public Schools ascended to the Left (or WOKE)  Clericy.

L.M. Clark
Warren County