I’m Fighting Book Bans at My Tennessee Library

No two men should have this much power.

July 1, 2023, wasn’t a typical day—it was the day the Murfreesboro, Tennessee City Ordinance 23-0-22, better known as the “Decency Ordinance,” was set to go into effect.

This ordinance gave Police Chief Michael Bowen and City Manager Craig Tindall the power to penalize anyone, anywhere in public, for anything they deemed indecent.

When questioned on what would qualify as indecent during public discussions before Murfreesboro City Council voted to pass the ordinance, the response was: I can tell you when I see it.

I believe that this was an absurd and dangerous attempt to criminalize being LGBTQ in our town, a discriminatory effort that coincided with a similar attempt to erase Murfreesboro’s LGBTQ citizens and their stories at the Rutherford County Library System (RCLS).

Fortunately, with the bad came some good—a community ready to defend and protect everyone’s rights to be themselves and be welcome.

I quickly signed a petition against censorship on Facebook created by Matt and Tiffany Fee, two concerned Rutherford County residents, also instrumental in the formation of The Rutherford County Library Alliance (RCLA) Facebook group.

I became an active member and now serve as vice president. We started preparing to appear at the August 28 library board meeting where the board of directors would decide the fate of six books one library patron had challenged.

It was standing room only. What I witnessed that day was disturbing: Board members laughing as they were unable to correctly say “LGBTQ+,” cherry-picking sentences from some of the targeted books, and taking them out of context.

They also showed a lack of understanding of how the Miller Test works, the longstanding historic legal test for determining whether expression constitutes obscenity. They tried to gaslight, unconvincingly, that it was “just a coincidence that all the books were LGBTQ+.”

Most horrifyingly of all, a board member demanded from library staff the name of the person responsible for allowing the books to be on the shelves in what felt to me like an attempt to intimidate.

After that meeting, I knew we needed to fight. Librarians were under intimidating pressure from their own board while the local government was censoring our community’s access to information—I believe in violation of the constitution.

To say I was shocked and frustrated would be an understatement. I could not understand how this could be happening in the United States of America.

Tiffany and I started working together in our fight against this unconstitutional move against our community’s library. We signed up to speak at library board meetings.

The board devised an opt-out graduated library card system. This denies anyone under the age of 18 the right to access any information not in their assigned area—youth and children’s sections—including non-fiction and reference materials for school or other educational needs unless their parents physically come into the library to fill out a form.

I believe the board’s system disregards the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom to access information. Multiple Supreme Court cases have dealt with this issue and reaffirmed that it is unconstitutional even to create barriers, let alone restrict access to information, even temporarily.

We continued to spread the word to anyone and everyone who would listen. Then came November.

The Rutherford County Steering Committee decided they wanted someone to go through every word, every picture, every page, every book, every piece of media in our public library’s system to look for anything that could be deemed “obscene” and have that item removed—or the county would pull the library’s funding.

The Steering Committee also wanted a guarantee that no “objectionable book” would ever be added to the collection in the future. The committee gave the library 60 days to return with a plan on how it would “police” itself—a thinly veiled threat, all in the name of “following the law.”

I felt like I was living in the Twilight Zone. Why was no one saying anything? Why were they trying to build on or copy the Murfreesboro City Decency Ordinance when the city is already wasting taxpayer money defending it in a court case they’re guaranteed to lose?

I raised my hand early in the Steering Committee meeting when the chair asked if there were any questions. I never expected to be recognized or have the opportunity to ask a question, but I found focusing on keeping my hand raised helped control my frustration.

To my shock, the chair recognized me and offered me three minutes to speak. I flat out asked them: “When in the history of the world have the people banning books been the good guys?”

I look back now at this time as being a turning point for RCLA. Since then, we have become a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization. While there are unknowns in the fight against book censorship, there have been victories, such as the recent unanimous vote to repeal the Murfreesboro City Decency Ordinance.

It’s also worth noting that RCLS has lost many of its veteran staff in the last six months, including—but not limited to—the Linebaugh branch manager (our largest branch), the director of libraries, and the collection development coordinator.

I wonder if the threats and intimidation played a part. It must be extremely stressful to be told to ignore years of education and experience and go against your core beliefs to do things you know are wrong, else risk losing your job and breaking the law.

Librarians do not choose this career to make money—they do it out of love for their communities.

In the last six months, I have gone from being your typical stay-at-home mom who would occasionally talk back to the news on the TV, to becoming an advocate for our libraries and our liberties.

I cannot sit back and stay quiet any longer. Some people have thanked me for speaking out and fighting, even though it is not my fight, and I did not have to get involved. My brain cannot comprehend that. I do not see how this is not my fight, too.

Everyone is equal—last I checked, I am part of everyone. So this is my fight, just as it should be every American’s responsibility and duty to defend the Constitution.

In recent years, our rights have diminished, and especially so for marginalized groups. If we continue this trend, it will no longer be the America we recognize; the land of the free will only apply to a small segment of our society.

We cannot let that happen, and I will do everything I can to fight for our freedoms.

Keri Lambert, B.Sc., is a stay-at-home mom and Vice President of the Rutherford County Library Alliance (RCLA) in Murfreesboro, TN. You can follow RCLA on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok . Click here to learn the latest regarding Rutherford County Libraries.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

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