APLS is playing cat-and-mouse with Fairhope library funds

About an hour and a half into last week’s Alabama Public Library Service board meeting, one simple question from Fairhope Public Library Director Robert Gourlay captured the frustrations that have slung back and forth for more than a year between the APLS and the chief thorn in its side, the Fairhope library.

How can a library know whether it is in compliance with state code?

The question might sound like a snooze, but the underlying topic is fraught.

At the point when Gourlay posed his question, the APLS board had just voted 3-2 to not restore Fairhope’s state funding, which has been suspended since last March over allegations that the library has failed to remove sexually explicit books from its teen section – and, hence, that it is not in compliance with the state’s Administrative Code. Last year, the loss of funding meant $22,000 down the drain for Fairhope. If the APLS keeps the tap turned off, the library could lose twice as much money this year. Tens of thousands of dollars hinge on the answer to Gourlay’s question.

Throughout the meeting, board chairman John Wahl insisted that the rules and definitions around the topic are clear. And at first glance, the stuffy layers of bureaucracy that enshroud those rules might indeed be mistaken for clarity. In 2024, the APLS spearheaded changes to the state code, tasking local library boards with creating guidelines for keeping “sexually explicit” and “inappropriate” content out of minors’ sections. It all looks very official, right there in black and white.

The problem? The code fails to define what those words actually mean, and conflicting definitions abound.

It’s tempting to say libraries should just use common sense to examine challenged books. How hard could it possibly be to determine whether a text is sexually explicit? But that’s the beauty of literature: Authors can deploy the poetry of metaphor, of insinuation, of stagecraft, to write about difficult subjects with exquisite delicacy. In “Speak,” a novel that has been challenged at the Fairhope Public Library, author Laurie Halse Anderson includes two scenes of sexual assault.

Both scenes are terrifying, intensely physical, and not at all graphic. Would they count as sexually explicit? I would say no. Clearly, whoever challenged the book would argue otherwise.

A memo that Wahl circulated in May 2025 aimed to more fully nail down the definition of “sexually explicit.” It didn’t exactly clear things up, though, instead raising questions about how an informal document such as a memo could possibly act as a substitute for a legal requirement.

Then there’s the word “inappropriate,” an adjective so vague and subjective that even the APLS board seems to avoid invoking it in discussions about challenged materials. Every family in Alabama has a little bit of different idea of what might be appropriate for a teenager. In the face of all those differing opinions, who becomes the final arbiter when a book is challenged? It isn’t the local library board – if it were, the APLS would have been satisfied with Fairhope’s local review of challenged materials and reinstated the library’s funding. Failing that, does the unelected Wahl (also the state GOP chairman) get to become, as fellow APLS board member Ronald Snider has repeatedly asked, Alabama’s “censor-in-chief?”

In lieu of clear policies, Wahl came to Thursday’s board meeting bearing packets of excerpts that he personally found objectionable from the 10 books at the nucleus of the Fairhope controversy. At the top of the discussion, Wahl underscored his disapproval by announcing a tally of swear words (which state code does not prohibit) collated from the stack of books. “A-S-S,” he noted, spelling it out, “was used 120 times.” He repeatedly pressed Gourlay and Fairhope library board chairwoman Randal Wright to defend the books.

The Fairhope locals steered clear of those weeds. They weren’t there to debate the merits of cherry-picked passages stripped of their context. Over the course of many months’ worth of treks up to Montgomery, they had already articulated their own defense and worked toward resolution by re-reviewing, and in some cases reshelving, embattled titles. Instead, they simply awaited the final determination of the board.

Yet even as it became clear that the APLS board was charging toward a negative outcome for Fairhope, board members tripped over each other with contradictions. They casually disagreed about whether the Fairhope library needed to reshelve all 10 of the challenged books, particularly “Beyond Magenta,” which Wahl and Kasandra Stevens said didn’t seem sexually explicit even as Amy Minton insisted that it needed to be moved.

Then, when Gourlay tried to clarify whether any conversation about sexuality qualifies as sexually explicit, Stevens explained that to count as sexually explicit, a scene would have to actually describe a sex act, after which Wahl gave an entirely different answer, saying that if a text included any words from the bulleted list in his May 2025 memo, it would count as explicit, even if it wasn’t particularly descriptive.

Got that?

Instead of stopping to resolve those contradictions, the board ignored them and kept chugging blithely along, leaving the Fairhope representatives no more enlightened about how on earth to comply with the state’s regulations.

The Fairhope library could simply give up and move all 10 challenged books (except, presumably, “Beyond Magenta”?) into the adult section to release itself from this bureaucratic nightmare. But even if it opted for the easy way out, the library would not find resolution. Another round of code changes is working its way through the guts of Alabama’s legislative system. If the Legislature codifies it without any changes, it will go into effect on Feb. 14, barring depictions of transgender people from libraries’ youth sections. “Beyond Magenta” will find itself once again caught up in APLS’ dragnet, along with any books that include “gender ideology” — another critically important term the board has failed to define.