{"id":177763,"date":"2025-04-08T19:34:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T19:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/alabama\/wahl-and-apls-want-to-protect-kids-by-banning-reality-and-truth\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T19:34:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T19:34:41","slug":"wahl-and-apls-want-to-protect-kids-by-banning-reality-and-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=177763","title":{"rendered":"Wahl and APLS want to “protect kids” \u2014 by banning reality and truth"},"content":{"rendered":"


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John Wahl wants you to believe he\u2019s just a concerned citizen. But when a man leads a campaign to censor award-winning books, defund public libraries, and impose a narrow religious worldview on state policy, what else should we call him?<\/p>\n

In a recent open letter<\/a> to the people of Fairhope, Wahl \u2014 who chairs both the Alabama Public Library Service and the Alabama Republican Party \u2014 insisted that \u201csome have tried to label the APLS Board as \u2018far-right radicals.\u2019\u201d He called the criticism unfair. He called it misinformation. But the most compelling evidence that the label fits is Wahl\u2019s own letter.<\/p>\n

The APLS board, under his leadership, voted to withhold state funding from the Fairhope Public Library over two novels located in the youth section: Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson and Sold by Patricia McCormick. These are not salacious books. They are searing, award-winning accounts of girls who are trafficked, abused and manipulated \u2014 written to help teens understand, identify and escape those very threats.<\/p>\n

But according to Wahl, hearing excerpts from these books left him \u201cheartbroken,\u201d calling them \u201csome of the most vulgar and sexually explicit content\u201d he\u2019s ever encountered. That claim says far more about Wahl than it does about the books. Because what he labels vulgar is, in truth, the reality that too many children \u2014 especially girls \u2014 face every day. These books don\u2019t endanger children. They prepare them for the dangers adults so often ignore.<\/p>\n

Wahl insists that \u201cno child should be exposed to this type of content without the full awareness and consent of their parents.\u201d But libraries don\u2019t force books into kids\u2019 hands. Parents already have the ability to guide their children\u2019s reading. This isn\u2019t about parental rights. It\u2019s about government control. And it\u2019s being enforced not through community engagement, but through the raw power of the state.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget how this defunding threat began: after several members of Clean Up Alabama spoke during a public comment period, accusing the library of violating new administrative codes. These aren\u2019t experts. They are activists, part of a political pressure group trying to force public libraries across Alabama to abandon the American Library Association, remove LGBTQ+ books and treat any mention of gender, trauma or identity as \u201cobscene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clean Up Alabama has labeled the ALA a \u201cMarxist organization,\u201d called for libraries to blacklist dozens of titles and demanded compliance with their own moral code. And John Wahl? He\u2019s not just aligned with their goals \u2014 he\u2019s been a featured participant in their events. He dismissed concerns about his involvement last year, claiming it was just \u201copen dialogue,\u201d and that he had \u201cno agenda.\u201d Yet here he is, using the weight of the state library board to implement Clean Up Alabama\u2019s agenda nearly verbatim.<\/p>\n

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Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In his letter, Wahl lays out \u201cthree common-sense\u201d steps he wants the Fairhope Library to adopt: remove certain books from youth sections, establish a parent-led book review process, and require a card system so parents can block their children from checking out \u201cadult\u201d books. But these aren\u2019t common-sense solutions. They are political tools designed to intimidate, isolate and restrict.<\/p>\n

This is not about protecting children. It\u2019s about policing thought. It is not about keeping kids safe. It\u2019s about keeping them in line.
It\u2019s not about parents\u2019 rights. It is about politicians\u2019 power.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is the hypocrisy more obvious than in the Republican Party\u2019s constant shrieking about \u201cindoctrination.\u201d The very people who cry wolf about brainwashing in schools are the ones now demanding government-enforced conformity in public libraries. They are so fixated on sex and children that it borders on obsession \u2014 projecting their own anxieties onto every book that mentions puberty, consent, gender identity or trauma.<\/p>\n

Their crusade isn\u2019t limited to Fairhope. The Alabama GOP\u2019s 2025 legislative agenda calls for banning so-called \u201ctransgender indoctrination\u201d and enforcing \u201cfemale-only access\u201d to public facilities \u2014 code for rolling back rights, silencing LGBTQ+ youth and punishing difference.<\/p>\n

This is about control. Control of libraries. Control of schools. Control of children\u2019s minds. They accuse others of grooming, yet seek to groom the state itself into a reflection of their narrow, weaponized version of Christianity.<\/p>\n

And this, too, has a history. In 1821, Heinrich Heine<\/a> warned, \u201cWhere they burn books, they will ultimately burn people.\u201d Every authoritarian movement begins with the suppression of stories. It begins with censorship disguised as morality. It begins when people like John Wahl stop pretending to care about children \u2014 and start using them as pawns in their ideological war.<\/p>\n

So no, John Wahl isn\u2019t being unfairly labeled. He\u2019s being accurately described. If he wants to prove otherwise, he can start by stepping away from the censorship table, disavowing Clean Up Alabama, and respecting the professional judgment of librarians and educators.<\/p>\n

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Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But until that happens, let\u2019s call this what it is. A radical attempt to control what children read, how they think and who they become. Not through education, but through erasure.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s happening in Fairhope is not the end of this story. It\u2019s the beginning of a purge. And if we don\u2019t speak up now, Alabama\u2019s libraries won\u2019t be places of learning \u2014 they\u2019ll be monuments to silence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Wahl wants you to believe he\u2019s just a concerned citizen. But when a man leads a campaign to censor award-winning books, defund public libraries, and impose a narrow religious worldview on state policy, what else should we call him? In a recent open letter to the people of Fairhope, Wahl \u2014 who chairs both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":177764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11763],"tags":[62076,26202,13261,8370,18170,26203,351,1409,6970,5477,6112],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-177763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alabama","tag-alabama-public-library-service","tag-apls","tag-banning","tag-censorship","tag-fairhope-public-library","tag-john-wahl","tag-kids","tag-protect","tag-reality","tag-truth","tag-wahl"],"yoast_head":"\nWahl and APLS want to "protect kids" \u2014 by banning reality and truth - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=177763\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wahl and APLS want to "protect kids" \u2014 by banning reality and truth - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Wahl wants you to believe he\u2019s just a concerned citizen. 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