Ciaran O'Connor: Manufactured controversy threatens LGBT+ community and library staff, not your children
There have been a number of incidents at the Grand Parade library in Cork involving people opposed to the display of certain material. Picture: Denis Minihane
WE NEED to talk about the banning and burning of books.
You might have read reports in recent weeks that individuals and groups around the country have entered libraries and demanded the removal of LGBTQ+ books perceived to be inappropriate for supposedly “sexualising,” “indoctrinating” and “grooming” young people.
These protests are happening more widely and more regularly than you think, and as a society we need to be careful where it goes from here.
This particular issue has rapidly become enough of a threat that public library staff have been given instructions on how to secure buildings, alert gardaí, and handle public comments about the situation.
Groups with official-sounding names have alleged these books violate child protection legislation and have issued clear instructions to supporters to enter libraries and document evidence of the books they believe to contravene legislation.
The tactics and rhetoric used by this small cluster of activists have given them significant exposure online. But this is not a wholly organic movement.
Protests targeting LGBT+ books and events have become increasingly prevalent in the US and UK and have now made it to these shores. That is to say, this panic was manufactured abroad and imported, adopted, and adapted by local figures here. It’s worth exploring just how this happened.
Contentious protests
Through February and March in Cork, one group of protesters entered the City Library five weeks in a row demanding staff take the LGBT+ title This Book is Gay off the shelves, describing it as “filth” and inappropriate for 12 to 17-year-olds (the book has been challenged due to sections that provide detailed advice on anal and oral sex and sexting). Threats to burn the book outside the building were followed by protesters ripping up the book inside the building in March.
Invasive questions and direct accusations have routinely been thrown at library staff. In the same library, protesters repeatedly asked staff if they had children themselves, and told them they should be ashamed of themselves for stocking these books.
During a similar incident in Ashbourne Library in Meath recently, a protester asked a staff member who was the “librarian to be held accountable” for bringing these books into the library, before issuing vague legal threats and invoking pieces of legislation aimed at intimidating staff.
The confrontational style is deliberate and designed to be recorded and shared online to spread their claims about these books, and make targets of the institution and its staff.
The HSE this week said it would remove reading lists from its Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) resource, including their Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) unit for schools, as it is being updated to reflect the new curriculum. The course is aimed at Junior Cert students as part of a roll-out of sex education for 12-15 year olds in Ireland.
Juno Dawson’s This Book is Gay had been on the list, but the HSE said the reading lists had been taken down to reflect a revised SPHE curriculum. The book has also been removed from the Children’s Books Ireland Pride Reading Guide, with the group saying:
Much of the book’s content remains valuable for LGBT+ teenagers, however some aspects do not reflect the more inclusive current language used by the LGBT+ community. Although it was initially recommended for readers aged fifteen and older, we have also found that the language and tone is better suited to older teenagers and young people outside of Children’s Books Ireland’s 0-18 age remit.
For protesters, libraries and bookshops are seen as ground zero in this culture war, and are depicted as places where children are being dangerously exposed to harmful material.
They ignore the fact that these books are not mandatory reading for anyone, and they are a vital resource for young gay people in the same way that books about heterosexual relationships teach straight people about sex and relationships.
At the forefront of the Irish campaign to ban LGBT+ books from libraries throughout the country are groups with official sounding names that give the impression they’re reputable organisations, complete with local chapters, perhaps a national board, and staffed by a vast network of professionals.
In reality, they’re a handful of people, each with a Facebook page and other accounts on different platforms, working together with their followers to scaremonger, misinform, and mislead through concerted online and offline action.
In effect, these groups practise a form of astroturfing, which is the attempt to create the appearance of far-reaching grassroots support for a viewpoint when little widespread support exists.
Such groups also have a history of promoting conspiracy theories about covid-19 vaccines, promoting false claims about refugees, and describing climate change as a “scam.” Yet a small cluster of activists has already achieved significant attention and impact.
Monday’s Liveline featured two callers speaking out about the so-called threat of these books. The callers were in fact founders of two of the astroturfing groups listed above.
Similarly, it was recently reported that Fine Gael TDs said they are “getting more emails on transgender issues than on the eviction ban.” However, it is worth noting that one of these astroturfing groups above was responsible for orchestrating the recent call-to-action campaign to phone and email TDs to “stop transgender ideology coming into schools.”
This gets to the heart of this movement and brings us to the term ‘groomer.’ In videos from Cork library, protesters could be heard telling staff to “educate themselves” on groomers, saying the “filthy” book is indoctrinating children, and one self-described concerned parent claimed that “sexualising children is part of a paedophile agenda where they want to turn the world into a paedophile paradise where they can molest children and no-one will bat an eyelid.”
'Groomer'-gate
These claims are not new, and indeed they echo the sort of claims made by far-right conspiracies such as QAnon. Since the outset of the gay rights movements in the US, the LGBT+ community has faced accusations that they are a danger to children or somehow pursuing an agenda to foster societal tolerance for paedophilia.
These allegations usually came from Christian groups and, at various turns, anti-LGBT+ fears have also been weaponised by political parties on the right to restrict the rights of this community.
The groups here are small, albeit vociferous and active, but such campaigns have become more much organised and widespread in countries such as the US.
And far-right campaigns have taken root here on other issues, such as the idea that Ireland is facing an “invasion” of migrants.
More recently, the advent of legislation in countries around the world to give LGBT+ communities greater fundamental human rights has resulted in a reactionary backlash. Online, extremists stepped up smear campaigns to falsely link queer people to paedophilia, and the promotion of deranged conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and QAnon, which include allegations of crimes against children at the centre of their belief systems, has grown.
These same extremist communities helped to popularise the term ‘groomer.’ This coincided with a wider trend of anti-LGBT+ legislation passed in Florida and numerous other US states, aimed primarily at targeting transgender youth’s access to gender-affirming healthcare, and curtailing teaching about LGBT+ lives in schools. The term was even adopted by political figures to describe those who opposed such anti-LGBT+ legislation as “groomers.”
The slur is used to justify suspicion, hatred and even violence against the LGBT+ community. It is used in equal measure by political and media figures in the US, as it is by religious extremists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis online, as documented in our analysis at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an NGO that researches online extremism, disinformation and hate.
Since 2017 in the US, far-right groups have targeted libraries and bookstores where drag queens host reading events for children. Queer people who interact with children are now being targeted and harassed and there is potential for real-world harm.
Lest we forget, Ireland passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2015 and in the same year we voted for Marriage Equality.
The nation has voiced its overwhelming support for the LGBT+ community, so where has this sudden supposed anxiety about our gay and transgender friends come from?
This is a manufactured panic.
First seen in the US, it has already spread to the UK, and is gaining attention in France, Canada, and now Ireland. It presents a clear-cut example of how hostile anti-LGBT+ tactics have been imported from the US and are now being deployed by local figures here and elsewhere.
Our political leaders must not let this meaningless culture war topic distract them from more pressing societal problems such as housing and healthcare.
And for the rest of us in the public, this creeping homophobia and transphobia must be rejected.
Ciaran O’Connor works on research and investigations for the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, specialising in technology and extremism.
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