Huntington Beach to use parent review board to vet children’s books for public library, City Council decrees
A community parent advisory board will be tasked with approving children’s books that hit shelves in the Huntington Beach Public Library, a move critics say is a book ban and takes power away from trained and educated librarians.
The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4-3, with the conservative majority holding sway, to approve a resolution to form the board near the end of a hotly debated meeting Tuesday night.
There were 128 people signed up for public comments, which took about five hours. About 550 people also emailed the City Council about the agenda item, with more than 90% against the idea of a council-appointed board screening children’s books for sexual content.
But Resolution No. 2023-41, introduced by Mayor Pro Tem Gracey Van Der Mark, was passed. Van Der Mark was joined in support by her conservative colleagues on the dais, Mayor Tony Strickland and Councilmen Casey McKeon and Pat Burns. Councilman Dan Kalmick and Councilwomen Natalie Moser and Rhonda Bolton voted against the item.
Van Der Mark, who first brought forth the idea in June, has been seeking more oversight of children’s books for years, even before she was elected to the City Council last fall. In 2020, she initiated a successful challenge to move “Gender Queer: A Memoir” from the young adult/teen section to the adult section of the library.
She said she has had several meetings with city staff to discuss library issues and the process of procurement of children’s books.
“The whole goal [is] to make our libraries the safest place for our children,” Van Der Mark said. “I’ve been working with cleaning up our school libraries for many years, seven years. In spite of the fact that I brought forward books that were controversial, very sexually explicit books, there was always a lot of push-back.”
She reiterated Tuesday night that it’s her belief the new regulations don’t amount to a book ban. The dictionary defines “ban” as the act of officially or legally prohibiting something.
The parent or guardian advisory board, which can include up to 21 members, will have the final say on what new children’s books can hit public library shelves. It will also review books currently in the library to see if they should be moved out of the children’s section.
Votes will be by simple majority, and there will not be an appeals process for any board decision, per council discussion.
“We are engaging the community,” Van Der Mark said. “We’re empowering the parents to have more control.”
Community and library services director Ashley Wysocki confirmed to Van Der Mark that library staff often make collection development decisions based on data, meaning some books are rejected. Van Der Mark asked Wysocki if that constituted a book ban, and she answered no.
Kalmick responded that there’s a nuanced difference between a librarian’s collection procedure and a review board of people appointed by a political board deciding about community standards for sexual content.
“If we’re stopping something from entering someplace, I forget what that’s called,” Kalmick answered facetiously. “When you’re 86ed from a bar, I forget what it’s called. If you’re counting cards in a casino and you aren’t allowed back in — it’s called a ban. You’re banned from the casino, you’re banned from the bar, and your new books that are deemed inappropriate by this committee of parents or guardians will be banned from entering the library.”
Moser asked if the parental review board would be a Brown Act board, and Van Der Mark said no. Moser then asked for public live-streamed meetings, which seemed like they could be a possibility. There will be no minimum qualifications for the review board members.
“Frankly, we should be driving young people to go to the library,” Moser said. “We’re driving them to the Internet, a place that is not fact-checked, it’s not curated, it’s not rigorously reviewed ... I want to understand why members of this council majority keep attempting to fix what is not broken.”
Earlier Tuesday, the City Council held a study session where staff presented ideas for library updates, including a parental control library card and requiring minors 12 years old and younger to be accompanied by an adult at all times in the library. Van Der Mark said those ideas could complement the ideas expressed in her resolution.
The outcome of the City Council’s vote went against a request from the 1st Amendment Coalition, ACLU of Southern California and Freedom to Read Foundation, which sent a joint letter Tuesday urging them to reject the resolution.
PEN America also raised concerns over the council vote in a response Wednesday morning.
“The decision from the Huntington Beach City Council should sound an alarm for residents across the state of California,” said Allison Lee, PEN America Los Angeles managing director, in a statement. “To review an entire children’s library collection based on an opaque claim of ‘sexual content’ is absurd. Librarians are not in the habit of stocking pornography on children’s library shelves, and this review stands only to censor literature that children and teens deserve access to. We have seen how attacks on ‘sexual content,’ particularly on children’s books, have been used to target books with LGBTQ+ themes and books that include characters of color. We hope the community will continue making their voices heard and maintain diligence over the identification and processes of the appointed community review board.”
State Sen. Dave Min also showed up to Tuesday night’s meeting to speak against the resolution, as did a few librarians. Carin Meister is a school librarian in Huntington Beach, and a mother of three daughters who use the Central Library often.
“How are you planning to finance this committee?” Meister asked the council. “Will you be purchasing 21 copies of any books deemed objectionable, so that all committee members can actually read the material in question? Or, will you be like book-banners everywhere, who incite fear with images and trigger words like ‘grooming’ and don’t even bother to read the material in question?”
A Marina High School student said she was abused when she was younger, and books have always been a safe space and escape for her.
“At 16 years old, I am able to legally drive a 2,000-pound vehicle, and you want to take away my right to choose what books I can read,” she said. “Cars can cause a lot more damage than reading a book with sexual content. Let us choose the books we see fit to read. Don’t over-govern our personal choices.”
Council members on the losing side of Tuesday’s vote also expressed concerns that the parental advisory board could open the city to lawsuits.
But Surf City resident Kevin Otis said he supported the resolution.
“This is not a book ban,” Otis said. “This resolution is about properly protecting our underage children through appropriate and beyond-reasonable boundaries. Those in opposition, do you not believe in appropriate boundaries?”
During the council’s discussion, McKeon said he couldn’t comprehend why people are so in favor of children having access to sexually explicit material without parental consent.
“Can a child attend an R-rated movie?” he asked. “No, they cannot. They could with parental guidance with an adult. Could a child check out an R-rated movie at Blockbuster? No, they could not. Is that a movie ban? No ... Movies versus books, it’s the same thing.”
Moser responded that the movie industry rating system uses voluntary guidelines adopted by a private industry, while the book censorship issue involves the imposition of government restrictions on speech in violation of 1st Amendment freedoms.
“It’s just not the same thing,” she said. “It’s not apples to [apples].”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
