The American Library Association, a nonprofit whose stated primary mission over the last century has been advocating for libraries and librarians, is fighting a new bill in Congress that aims to cut off federal funding to schools that promote or provide sexual programming or literature to children.
The language the ALA is using to fight the measure, however, has conservative parents groups either scratching their heads or crying hypocrisy.
These parental advocacy groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Eagle Forum, are questioning the ALA’s stated commitment to backing parents’ rights to determine what sexual material their children can or cannot read or be exposed to at school.
In fact, the conservative groups argue, the ALA’s mission is in direct conflict with parents’ rights. It’s absurd to for the ALA to say it supports conservative parents’ rights to oppose or opt out of certain school activities while encouraging more libraries across the country to hold drag queen story hours and purchase books that include sexually explicit material in elementary and secondary public-school libraries, the groups argue.
The debate is taking place amid new attention to the culture wars playing out in public schools across the nation. Just Monday the Supreme Court blocked, for now, a California rule preventing teachers and school administrators from telling parents if their children start identifying as transgender without getting the student’s approval.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who wanted to opt out of LGBTQ+-friendly curriculum on religious grounds. Last week the court found that the Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education must comply with paying $1.5 million in damages to the group of parents.
On Friday Rep. Mary Miller upped the ante. A Republican from Illinois who chairs the House Family Caucus, she introduced Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, a bill that would prohibit the use of funds at schools promoting any program or activity that includes sexually oriented material, while preserving instruction in science, classic literature, art, and world religion.
“I agree that parents, not bureaucrats should guide their children’s reading, and that’s why this legislation exists,” she told RealClearPolitics. “The American Library Association actively opposes groups that are raising concerns about the hyper-sexualization of material in schools.”
Yet, in working to defeat the new bill banning federal funding from schools that expose children to sexual material, ALA President Sam Helmick issued a press release Friday arguing that “parents, not politicians, should guide their children’s reading.”
Helmick also claimed that the work of librarians in public schools remains “grounded in one clear purpose: helping young people become lifelong readers.” Miller’s bill isn’t “fundamentally about protecting kids,” Helmick argued.
Instead, “it’s about giving politicians broad authority to restrict whose stories are allowed on our shelves,” Helmick said. “That should concern anyone who believes in the freedom to read and the right of families to make decisions for themselves.”
Yet, even as the ALA claims to be nonpartisan and support parent rights and choices, on its website the organization often cites advocating for a “more equitable, diverse and inclusive society” as one of its main goals and even includes these ideals as part of its Library Bill of Rights.
For years, the ALA also has promoted drag queen story hours in libraries across the country as a way to promote inclusion while fighting conservatives who have deemed the story hours inappropriate sexual exposure for children and have worked to end them or to allow parents to opt their children out of participating.
“The ALA has lost their way,” Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit that works to empower parents to defend parental rights, tells RCP. “They no longer focus on literary, and they focus on social activism and extreme ideologies, working in hand-in-hand with teacher unions.”
The ALA on its website even provides “tool kits” on how to fight parents and parent groups trying to end or prevent the drag queens from coming to their schools and offers “resources” and guidance on ways in which libraries can place LGBTQ+ materials into schools throughout the country, even in conservative areas where parents’ groups have vehemently opposed them.
The ALA, through its Office for Intellectual Freedom, also has defended what it calls the “Top 10 Most Challenged Books,” pressing school and community libraries across the country to fight efforts on behalf of conservative parents groups to remove the books from children’s libraries even if they are sexually explicit.
No. 1 on the 2024 list of “most challenged” books is “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson. The book, which is about growing up black and queer in New Jersey includes excerpts describing the author as a 10-year-old being subjected to unwanted and painful anal sex and incest with a cousin.
Another title on the list, “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, includes a scene in which a character describes a getting “a new strap-on harness” that “fits my favorite dildo perfectly” and giving someone the best “blowjob of your life,” among other sexual excerpts.
Helmick, who prefers “they/them” pronouns, doesn’t see any inconsistencies in the organization’s efforts to protect certain explicit LGBTQ+ books along with drag queen story hour in numerous states and the ALA press release expressing support for parents’ right to control what their children see and read at school.
Raised as a Christian whose parents chose to homeschool, Helmick told RCP that children should have “unfettered” access to all books librarians choose specifically because it allows parents to assert control “because parents can’t actually have choice if you don’t give them options.”
“What we have to think about is are we writing bills that are really trying to respond to specific titles that we don’t like, which means we’re trying to build libraries from our own specific viewpoint?” Helmick asked. “Or are we trying to have more bipartisan, egalitarian systems in which you’re responsible to navigate your own educational lives and do the same from your child and respect your neighbor’s autonomy to do the same?”
Asked how parents can manage to help choose their children’s library books when they’re not at the school to do so, Helmick said parents have a say because they “set boundaries” and “tell [children] what they want them to read and what they don’t.” If a parent wants to oppose drag queen story hours, the parent can become active at the school and in the parent-teacher organizations to influence those programming decisions, Helmick argued.
Miller ardently disagrees. She says it’s ironic that many advocates for minority LGBTQ+ rights, including the ALA, don’t support them when it comes to opting out of sexual material at school because often conservative parents are in the minority position in liberal school districts when opposing such materials.
“We already restrict pornographic material for children, but I think the big question people should ask, why are national organizations fighting so hard and aggressively to keep pornographic materials in schools?” Miller asked.
“Parents deserve complete confidence that their tax dollars are being used to promote academic excellence – not to expose children to harmful and explicit material that undermines their innocence,” Miller said. “My legislation draws a clear and enforceable line to ensure our schools remain focused on education, not explicit ideological agendas or radical indoctrination.”
The dispute over the new bill is taking place against a fierce dispute playing out between the Trump administration and woke librarians the ALA supports along with heads of museums that have previously received federal grants.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a government grant-making entity, in 2024 described itself as the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. Over the last four years, it has doled out hundreds of millions in grants on everything from exhibits at museums, community colleges, and historic associations to basic library services such as workforce training and Internet service for rural libraries.
The Biden administration, through IMLS, also provided $2.37 in federal tax dollars directly to the ALA, but the Trump administration zeroed out the group’s funds for the fiscal year 2025, which ends in October. (Critics of ALA point to its endowment valued in 2025 at more than $64 million as proof that it doesn’t need federal funds.)
Last year, the Trump administration tried to defund the IMLS entirely and fired then-Director Cyndee Landrum. On its website, the ALA has since run a red banner arguing that “library funding is under threat” and encouraging supporters to call and email their members of Congress to support “federal library funding” while helping to spread the word on social media. Last week, the ALA also sent a team of employees and advocates to Capitol Hill to lobby for its agenda.
The fight between the ALA and the Trump administration began last March after the president signed an executive order seeking to essentially eliminate the IMLS. Attorneys general from 21 states and the ALA sued the Trump administration to block it from dismantling the agency. That same month, Trump appointed Keith Sonderling, a lawyer and deputy secretary of labor, to head the IMLS.
A court ruled in November that the effort to slash the IMLS was unlawful but not before dozens of the agency’s employees were placed on administrative leave and the museums and libraries were terminated. The IMLS restored the congressionally mandated funding that requires a certain level for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and rural initiatives among other priorities.
In a press release announcing his appointment as acting director, Sonderling pledged to “revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”
The effort was aimed at reshaping IMLS’s image to align with Trump’s anti-woke agenda after the agency previously had been known for funding displays and initiatives promoting DEI. In fact, in the past, “diversity and inclusion” was required for “project justification” and most awardees readily complied. That history put the IMLS in direct conflict with Trump’s January 2025 executive order requiring federal agencies to award grants on the condition that recipients do not “operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’”
In January, the IMLS announced it would fund 250 “Freedom Trucks,” one of the largest traveling exhibits teaching about America’s founding to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary.
“By connecting our nation’s past to the future of the American workforce, this initiative helps inspire the next generation to understand the values of opportunity, innovation, and service that make this country exceptional,” Sonderling said at the time.
It also provided guidance in a cover letter introducing new grant funding opportunities for projects offering “uplifting and positive narratives of our shared American experience.”
The new grant guidance cites several of Trump’s executive orders, including one from March 2025 calling for “restoring truth and sanity to American history” by removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and federal historic sites’ “divisive narratives.” The administration used the executive orders as a basis for a content review at the Smithsonian, and for the removal of a long-standing exhibit on slavery at Philadelphia’s Independence National Park. The exhibit had detailed the lives of nine people enslaved by George Washington.
Past awardees complain that the new guidance is having a “chilling effect” on interest in applying, but others who support the IMLS’s transformation argue that the agency is still awarding the same number of grants to HBCUs and rural communities as Congress requires while embracing themes of American exceptionalism, which align with Trump’s vision, and leveling the playing field so that conservative groups can compete with more liberal-leaning groups and themes.
Conservative parents’ rights groups say they welcome the Trump administration’s efforts to allow more exhibit diversity by appealing to traditional values, especially when it comes to libraries.
“I live in Fairfax County, and there’s not a library in our area that doesn’t have some sort of display to highlight either Muslim Sharia law, racism, or gender ideology, and I often have to steer my kids away from those kind of books – books that often are designed to target young minds,” Tabitha Walter, executive director of Eagle Forum, said in an interview.
“This is our taxpayer dollars propping up this ideology, and it just baffles me that when Trump wants to encourage groups to put truth out there to commemorate the 250 years of our nation, there’s a backlash over it,” she added.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.
