County Pulls Funding From Library Association

    The Lake County Commission on Tuesday by unanimous vote moved to withdraw funding support for the American Library Association and its Florida affiliate, the Florida Library Association. The move represents a roughly $3,000 cash withdrawal, a small amount in the county's overall budget, but for commissioners, the vote was about more than money.
   "The ALA has been a proponent…of questionable activities that don't really line up with what most people think should be going on in Lake County," said Commissioner Leslie Campione, who had brought the topic forward for discussion on Tuesday.
   The ALA has made national headlines in recent months, as backlash has grown to its support of alternative lifestyle choices for children of all ages, including drag programs for youth, sexually explicit content in books for beginning readers, and other ‘indoctrination’ programs designed to support Marxist ideology through library operations.
   A large group of citizens spoke in support of pulling funding from the organization.
   “They openly promote the sexual indoctrination of children,” said Any Dubois, echoing nearly a dozen speakers who encouraged the commission to pull funding.
   “I don’t think this is something Lake County should be associated with,” Campione said, and fellow commissioners agreed.
   “I’m in full support,” said commission chair Kirby Smith. “I had no idea until I did my research.”
   Commissioner Sean Parks pushed back against any argument that pulling ALA funding and closely monitoring what books appear in public libraries equates to book banning.
   “The false narrative that books are banned… maybe that is a marketing ploy. What we want is for that to not be pushed on children ages 18 or under.”
   Commissioner Josh Blake forcibly concurred that such books should not be in county libraries.
   “It’s not appropriate for young children. They can order their own smut,” Blake said, if parents decide they are OK with certain topics being in books their children read.
   The move places Lake County on a growing list of local and state government entities that have pulled funding to the ALA so far this year, including at least seven other counties in Florida and the State of Florida.