Democratic gubernatorial candidate Doug Jones last week promised that, if elected, he would remove several members of the Alabama Public Library Service executive board.
“The first thing that I can tell you I would do [as governor] is I’d get rid of a few people on that that library board, and have some people with some common sense and not some crazy political agenda that we see constantly, and so that they can work with public libraries to make sure that folks have access to information,” Jones said on an episode of “Doug Unplugged.”
The APLS board has changed radically over the last few years with three new appointments under Gov. Kay Ivey joining Chairman Nehemiah “John” Wahl, who is now running as a Republican for lieutenant governor. Ivey herself removed a longtime board member, Virginia Doyle, who questioned Ivey’s agenda.
The appointments gave the board a majority to enact sweeping changes to the state code, barring “sexually explicit” books from sections for children and teens and now going even further to ban depictions of transgender individuals from youth sections.
Those changes led to the first defunding of a public library in the state after the Fairhope Public Library chose not to move 10 books that the APLS deemed to be “Sexually explicit” under their definition of the term.
Wahl hit back at Jones’ comments late last week.
“Doug Jones is completely out of touch with reality and the people of Alabama, Wahl said in a statement. “Maybe he should spend a little more time listening to the parents who are horrified by the pornographic materials their children are stumbling across in some libraries before making judgments. Alabama families don’t want their kids exposed to this kind of trash, and anyone who has actually reviewed these books understands exactly why. Frankly, the livestream should have been titled ‘Doug Unhinged’ instead of ‘Unplugged.’”
While Wahl and critics have accused libraries of offering pornographic materials to youth, none of the books challenged have met any known common or legal definition of pornography.
