Penna Dexter

Parents are increasingly raising concerns that public libraries are actively exposing their kids to sexual activities and reading material. But, when they complain about drag queen story hours and books that can only be described as pornography aimed at kids, smiling librarians assure them their libraries are simply committed to “free inquiry”.

Indeed, Emily Drabinski, the recently-elected president of the American Library Association insisted in a TV interview that “There’s no big library agenda.”

But there is an agenda and Emily Drabinski, a self-proclaimed Marxist lesbian, sees the public library as a resource “to build collective power for the public good.” She received multiple endorsements praising her “accomplishments” which include “queering the landscape of library publishing and scholarship.” In July 2023, she will begin serving as president of the 54,000 member American Library Association which, according to The Federalist’s managing editor, Joy Pullmann, “drives the training of U.S. librarians and their use of public funds.”

In a comprehensive article about the ALA’s election of Emily Drabinski, Joy Pullman documents the endorsements of various ALA members, including April Hathcock who stated, “I so value Emily’s work in intentionally bringing a class, labor, and queer consciousness to her efforts as an anti-racist ally.”

Drabinski’s top-cited work, a 2013 article: “Queering the Catalog,” outlines her strategy for what she calls “Queer library politics.” Her lectures expand on this theme. One lecture, delivered last July, was titled “Teaching the Radical Catalog.” In that presentation, she showed a slide from the sexuality section of the Library of Congress and said “queerness is the subversion of those kinds of normal family types” — referring to families headed by a married man and woman.

Her statements tout the fluidity of gender identities and reject the existence of truth. This is classic Marxism. Joy Pullmann points out that “Marxists use sexual chaos as a deliberate strategy of cultural destruction.”

Drabinski also seeks to dismantle racism. Be warned. To her, this requires “dismantling America.”