In its 150th anniversary year, the American Library Association’s time is finally up.
For decades, America’s largest library membership association supported librarians, accredited schools, and recommended quality books with no clear political agenda. But that was then. In recent years, the ALA’s traditional mission has been co-opted by radical leadership. During the COVID-19 pandemic, former ALA President Emily Drabinski openly moved the association in a “Marxist lesbian” direction. ALA President Sam Helmick (they/them) is the current poster child of the ALA’s “collective action,” using whatever clout the ALA has left to promote drag shows to children. The U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services waits in the wings as a ready-made alternative.
The collectivist ALA has come under fire for backing titles such as Gender Queer and Let’s Talk About It (“it” is alternative sex), introducing the concepts of sex toys and oral sex to pre-teenagers. The pictures are worth a thousand words, but buyer beware. When media publications reference these books, they are literally forced to issue editor’s notes for “explicit material” and “graphic content,” and yet they are on the ALA’s recommended reading list. Selling sex to minors, the ALA’s modus operandi is to reframe pornographic content as “diverse materials” focused on “inclusion,” and then vilify critical parents as “book banners.”
Side note: No one is trying to ban books; the question is time and place. These titles are so inappropriate that they prompted a mass exodus from the ALA during the pandemic, only for the ALA to double down today, recently coming out against the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.”
Why? Because Congress is trying to stop the ALA from showcasing its national “Drag Queen Story Hour” program and other sexually alternative initiatives to children on the federal taxpayers’ dime. That’s it: Congress isn’t trying to criticize librarians or discourage reading; the goal is to prohibit the use of federal funds for sexually oriented activities rather than art, literature, science, or world religion — you know, actual education. Scrambling to keep the ALA’s federal funding in place, Helmick is now accusing the ALA’s critics of book burning while begging Congress for $232 million in taxpayer money to boot.
This shouldn’t be a political issue. Do Americans really believe that the ALA should show dildos to children? Should the ALA sponsor drag shows for children? Or should the ALA promote quality books for educational purposes?
For asking such questions, I have been sued by ALA librarians in federal court for defamation, and parents across the United States face similar wrath on a daily basis. On its website, the ALA actually provides “tool kits” on how to fight parents and parental groups that try to stop drag queens from “teaching” children. And now, members of Congress are facing the same wrath for picking parents over politics.
In 2026, if it is “controversial” for a library association to stop recommending porn or using drag queens to tell children’s stories, something is fundamentally broken beyond repair. The ALA is a sex-obsessed problem with no solution. The only fix is to defund the organization and delegate its responsibilities elsewhere. If the ALA is so valuable to American society, it should be able to raise money on its own — without taxpayers like you or me footing the bill.
No one is saying that these books can’t be sold. “Banned” books such as Gender Queer and Let’s Talk About It are still available on Amazon.com. But they should not be in elementary school or the children’s section of a library. Period.
If that is a “controversy,” any and all federal funding of the ALA should cease immediately. And there is already a viable alternative: The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that can recommend quality reading, accredit schools and libraries, and issue basic educational guidelines. The IMLS has been around since 1996, and it can serve as a nonpartisan voice that doesn’t shout sex from the rooftops.
THE QUIET RADICALIZATION OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY
Even as a longtime critic of the ALA, I wish that the U.S.’s education crisis wasn’t so critical. With U.S. reading scores at an all-time low, radical leaders such as Helmick still refuse to operate in good faith. They don’t have our children’s best interests at heart, and their obsession with a sexual revolution shouldn’t be rewarded with taxpayer funds or unchecked power as supposed education advocates.
It is time to defund the American Library Association and delegate its authority to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Enough is enough.
Dan Kleinman is the owner of SafeLibraries educational services. He is also the executive director of the World Library Association, an alternative to the American Library Association.
