Prof Diane Rasmussen McAdie, a UK Column presenter who holds a master’s degree and a PhD in library and information science, spoke with Dan Kleinman. He is an American father who has worked for 25 years to expose age-inappropriate books and events within American school and public libraries that are encouraged by the American Library Association (ALA). As a self-described ‘library watchdog’, Dan runs SafeLibraries and the World Library Association. His tireless work has been featured by other journalists, including Sonia Poulton, who featured him in her 2020 documentary Drag Queen Story Time: Child Grooming in Plain Sight?
Two days before this interview was recorded, Dan learnt that Amanda Jones, author of That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning In America, had filed a defamation lawsuit against him. School Library Journal reported on the lawsuit the day after he was notified. The lawsuit states that ‘Jones hopes that this lawsuit might cause Kleinman to stop falsely maligning librarians everywhere’, which demonstrates the larger plan to silence him. One of his blog posts that Jones used to implicate him is called ‘Poster Girl for ALA: “That Librarian” Amanda Jones Indoctrinates Students without Parents Knowing’.
Diane reviewed Jones’ book on the Scottish Union for Education’s Substack. The book was said to have documented Jones’ failed attempts at suing Michael Lunsford, Executive Director of Citizens for a New Louisiana, for defamation. Instead, it primarily focused on her feelings about her ‘haters’ via unprofessional statements such as ‘I have thought about how good it would feel to knee my haters in the groin’ and ‘Did you know you can send poop-grams to people you don’t like’?
Dan described his and others’ efforts in the United States to expose and protest the age-inappropriate sexual content present in children’s libraries, such as the graphic novel Let’s Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human, which he said includes, for example, information about ‘how to use objects with regard to your behind’. This content constitutes ‘pervasively vulgar and educationally unsuitable’ material, according to the 1982 Island Trees School District v. Pico US Supreme Court ruling. The Court also decided, however, that ‘Local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they [the petitioners] dislike the ideas contained in those books’. The latter decision is central to ALA’s position, but it ignores the former one.
Dan said ALA’s political agenda is described within Dr Rita Koganzon’s 2023 paper ‘There Is No Such Thing as a Banned Book: Censorship, Authority, and the School Book Controversies of the 1970s’ in American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture. This paper illustrated how ALA and other organisations have worked for decades to indoctrinate children through pushing age-inappropriate content into children’s library collections. They ‘conceived legal and media strategies to defend against challenges from parents’, tactics which can be observed first-hand via hand-written and typed notes taken at ALA’s librarian training events which Dan has obtained via Freedom of Information requests.
ALA tells librarians to silence those who disagree with age-inappropriate content through defamation lawsuits, and to call them ‘extremists’. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom labels concerned parents’ attempts to have age-inappropriate content examined as ‘censorship’, ‘book banning’, and in violation of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Roxana Caivano, a librarian at Roxbury High School in Dan’s home state of New Jersey, sued parents for challenging Gender Queer: A Memoir, in 2023. These book ‘challenges’ or attempts at ‘book bans’ are compiled on ALA’s Banned & Challenged Books site.
ALA sends large groups to library board meetings where age-inappropriate books are challenged. It has the intended effect of silencing the smaller group of concerned parents, as evidenced in this local news report. Many parents have read aloud graphic content appearing in children’s books at board meetings, only to end up silenced or removed from the meetings. These initiatives operate under ALA’s activist campaigns Unite Against Book Bans and the Freedom to Read Foundation, both of which have large donors backing their efforts such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations; ALA has even presented Soros with an award.
ALA’s agenda can also be observed through investigating its current leaders. ALA’s Immediate Past President is Emily Drabinski. She tweeted upon her election win: ‘I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build is the president-elect of @ALALibrary. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity! And my mom SO PROUD I love you mom’. In 2013, she wrote an article called ‘Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction’. Journalist Karlyn Borysenko recorded Drabinski’s presentation at the Socialism 2023 Conference, in which Drabinski stated that ‘libraries need to be a site of socialist organising’. ALA’s President-elect, the non-binary Sam Helmick, uses ‘they/them’ pronouns and has been active in ALA’s Rainbow Round Table, which sponsors the annual Stonewall Book Awards.
Deborah Cardwell-Stone, Executive Director of ALA’s Freedom to Read, stated about ‘book ban’ legislation that ‘The thing that needs to happen most … is sustained messaging that reframes this issue … um that uh … takes it away from the idea that these are inappropriate for minors or sexually inappropriate from minors and promote them as diverse materials and programming that are about inclusion, fairness, and protection of everybody’s right to see themselves and their families reflected in the books in the public library’. Senator Mike Lee played the video of her saying this in a 2023 ‘book ban’ Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2023 to support his claim that ALA’s agenda is to sexualise and groom children.
Although Dan is in America, his information is important for the UK and other Western countries because similar action is needed elsewhere. CILIP, the UK’s organisation that works reciprocally with ALA, provides librarians with resources on how to provide LGBTQ resources for all ages, as does CILIP Scotland. Diane was a leader in these two professional bodies until she resigned from them in summer 2024 due to their ongoing disciplinary actions against her for speaking out against their agenda. CILIP Wales responded positively to the Welsh Government’s LGBTQ+ Action Plan. Also see the Young People’s Version of the Plan.
Dan recommended the BookLooks website, which allows parents to ‘find out what objectionable content may be in your child’s book before they do’. Common Sense Media is another ratings site for parents to use; ALA does not allow librarians to link to it. He hopes that the hard work of his and other American organisations such as Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and the National Women’s Foundation will inspire parents in the UK to organise and demand changes in local authority and school libraries.
He suggested that as background research, parents should watch online recordings of local librarians’ meetings and conferences. He noted that the 2022 Texas Library Association’s Annual Conference featured drag queens. Indeed, the conference programme said that one drag queen ‘will lead a storytime and explain how you can promote literacy and community collaboration through dynamic storytelling and music’, and it indicated that another drag queen was a featured speaker.
This interview is an addition to Diane’s UK Column coverage of inappropriate content in children’s libraries, the sexualisation of children, and the indoctrination of children into gender ideology. For her previous reports and interviews, please see the following.
LGBTQ In Early Years and Children's Development
Raising Concerns Over Gender Indoctrination of Children: Voices Not Loud Enough
Protecting Children: Why Keeping Vulgar Books Out of Schools Isn’t ‘Book Banning’
End the Excellence: What’s Wrong with Scottish Education? – with Kate E. Deeming
Stop Medically Transitioning Children – Exploring the Cass Review with Dr Jenny Cunningham