Conservative activists are now in a position to determine what books are on the shelves. In Utah, parents have the power to control what books their child checks out, but also to challenge and review books for inclusion in the library, as districts in Texas have done.
One of the first success stories of the conservative parent groups was the Utah policy. BookLooks doesn't track how parents use the reviews for school policy challenges, but Utah Parents United was instrumental in getting the state to implement its current system She successfully challenged 19 books for review in May.
There is a fight going on on Facebook and other places. The Florida Freedom to Read Project claims that rating systems like BookLooks ignore the fact that teachers and librarians are trained to recommend books based on a child's development, interests, and maturity.
Conservative rate-and-review groups want to restrict what is available for everyone else but these rating systems are done by people who don't have any expertise The opposing system would never be done by us. There isn't a need for another rating system.
The voices of people in marginalized communities are being erased. The director of the American Library Association said that reviewers that focus solely on controversial topics with the goal of limiting access to books with which they disagree reflect a bias.
pornography is a concern for many parents in the conservative groups. The reason why she was spurred to action was due to an oral sex scene in the novel Gender Queer. Many schools have stopped teaching about gender queerness.
She says that they want books to be reviewed and put up against pornography laws. Her group doesn't always agree with the laws when it comes to what counts as porn. The Virginia court dismissed the claims that the books were obscene. The dismissal means that the book can be challenged in other states.
Conservative activists began lobbying to remove gender queer people from their district. She and her co-founder bought books to give away to local librarians and also held public give-aways of books with different voices.
To her, the fight is about the quality of education for her children. “Most parents want to give their child more, not less, access,” she says. “I really worry about the future of children’s education because of this.”
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