Across America, fractious debates over free speech in public and school libraries have turned these hushed realms into combat zones. But it was in the children's section.īURNETT: Lafayette Parish is by no means unique. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I'm a father of four children, young children, and my daughter found a book, a cartoon book that was basically pornographic - encouraged children to, you know, explore themselves in a variety of ways. A man in a tie and blue blazer steps up to the mic. We don't support fascism in the Lafayette Public Library.īURNETT: Lafayette Parish is deeply conservative Trump country, red as a boiled crawfish, so others in the community applaud the board's shift to the right. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hold up your signs for Cara again. And when a popular librarian, Cara Chance, disobeyed that order and put up a display that included queer romance, the board tried to get her fired. Now the libraries forbid displays about any group, even Cajuns. The library board rejected a grant to fund a program about voting rights, saying it was too left wing. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Everything that has happened in the past 18 months with this board and to the library has been basically a dystopian nightmare.īURNETT: Since conservatives took over the Lafayette Library Board last year, the controversies have come one after the other. JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: The battle inside America's libraries is playing out at the monthly meetings of the Lafayette, La., Library Board of Control.īURNETT: At the August meeting, after reports on the bookmobile, library hours and plans for a new branch, the lectern is open for public comments. Conservative Christian activists are demanding the removal of an expanding list of books, and free speech defenders are crying censorship. Librarians, public servants, masters of the Dewey Decimal System and now the latest villains in America's culture wars.
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