League City residents sound off on library ebook proposal

One after the other, residents of various backgrounds and ages spoke against the proposal, which would prohibit the city from spending tax dollars to materials targeted to children under 18 that “contain obscenity”. 

Former educators, school psychologists, current and former members of the library’s board of trustees told personal stories of how books enriched their lives, and in some cases, personal struggles, and spoke on the broader issues of censorship.

“I thought the days of book burning were over,” said one former teacher. 

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By late Tuesday, council had not addressed the proposal.

Many speakers read statements from unnamed members of the library staff and city staff, including one from a city employee who shared his experience as the father of a gay daughter who had a difficult time going public with her sexual identity. 

“We don’t always know the struggles of others and people often turn to books,” the statement read. 

Many chided the resolution’s language which seemed to equate pedophilia with homosexuality, and others mocked the authors for its use of terms like “ideologue sexuality”.

“I looked it up and I got two hits,” said one, “and both were from the League City agenda”.  

“No one has been able to tell me what ‘Ideologue sexuality” is,” said Saultczy Khobahlt Bleu before the meeting. Bleu, a League City resident, encouraged residents to attend Tuesday night’s meeting as a statement.

“I don’t think they knew what they were getting into and didn’t expect this kind of response (against the proposal).” 

Kirsten Garcia, a former educator, spoke about how, as a young survivor of sexual assault, books helped her journey toward healing when she couldn’t tell her story to anyone. 

“When you tell groups of people – whether they are survivors of rape, or pedophilia or whatever category they fall into – that literary (books) about them is not welcome we’re essentially telling them they are not welcome in the library,” Garcia said before the meeting. “When we start to exclude literature about certain groups of people, we are telling those people that their voices and experiences don’t matter.” 

Councilmember Justin Hicks said the resolution is not a book ban. 

The proposal, a third revision, is a watered down version of the original that would have prohibited the city from spending tax dollars on materials targeted to children  under 18 that “contain obscenity.”

Authored by councilmembers  Hicks and Andy Mann, the resolution would limit the use of tax dollars to purchase materials for the city library, specifically books aimed at children under age 18. Topics singled out for scrutiny in the resolution include gender ideology, pedophilia, rape and bondage, and “ideologue human sexuality.”

Opponents say the resolution, which has been revised three times since it was first made public, is an attempt to censor and leans heavily on materials that “contain obscenity,” a vague description some say is used to target LGBTQ-related and other perspectives.

With this proposed resolution, said David Baca, League City council has waded into the cultural war over censorship.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “This resolution is evil and full of hatred. It’s right out of the Nazi Germany playbook. You demonize people, you restrict participation by citizens and purge the libraries.”

A handful of speakers spoke in favor of the proposal, citing and reading aloud passages from children’s books they deemed “inappropriate” and pornographic.” 

The resolution was revised from its original version, which proposed an auditor review books and determine which were “non-compliant materials” and send a report to city council, which could then vote for the city manager to restrict access to the books or “to remove the materials from circulation altogether.”

An updated version of the resolution sent to the Houston Chronicle Monday described a process where residents could bring challenges over books to a “community standards review committee” that would be created by the city council. That committee could then determine whether to restrict access to the books for minors or remove them altogether from the library. The resolution would allow the option for a challenge to appeal the board’s decision.

A third version eliminated a sentence referring to the removal of the material “from circulation altogether” and replaced it with a suggestion to place the suspect materials in the adult section. 

“They’re being sneaky,” said Heidi Gordon, a member of a citizen’s group opposing the resolution. “For instance, if they don’t like a Judy Blume book, they place it in the adult section to hide it and it never gets checked out, and it eventually goes out of circulation.

Before the meeting, Mayor Nick Long said he would propose a 15-person committee to include members of the existing library board and eight members representing different factions of the community, including parents and educators, to review complaints. The council would then hear appeals of that committee’s decisions.

The proposed resolution mirrors broader efforts to censor books. According to a report from PEN America, of the 2,532 instances of books being banned from July 2021 to June 2022, Texas topped the list in number. The majority of the banned books, according to the report, include LGBTQ characters, address issues of race and racism, or provide sex education. A Chronicle investigation found that most of the over 2,000 book reviews in Texas schools since the 2018-2-19 school year were prompted by GOP politicians rather than parents.

 YOrozco@hxnonline.com