How children’s books have divided a community

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You might think Jessica Ruffcorn and Tanya Patton would find a lot in common. Both are Christian mothers who home-schooled their children. Both live among the wheat fields of eastern Washington’s Columbia County, closer to Idaho and the conservative heartland than the liberal enclaves of the Pacific coast. Both have made children a focus of their lives – Ms. Ruffcorn runs the local baseball league, Ms. Patton is a special-education teacher. Both believe in the importance of books.

Where Ms. Ruffcorn and Ms. Patton break company is on volumes such as It’s Perfectly Normal, a children’s guide to bodies and sex. Ms. Patton sees it as an instructional volume so useful it even taught her a few things about human development.

Ms. Ruffcorn sees it as something akin to pornography, with cartoon depictions of unclothed bodies and sexual positions. For more than a year, she has petitioned the library to keep books she deems inappropriate away from children – an effort that grew so intense she was prepared to ask voters to shutter the only library in the county she calls home.

Earlier this year, Ms. Ruffcorn helped lead a campaign for a ballot question that would let people in Columbia County vote on dissolving the library district, the mechanism through which local taxpayers fund the library.

“I would rather have no library than this library,” Ms. Ruffcorn said.

Late last month, that attempt was quashed when a court barred a vote on the question. For now, at least, it has relegated to history the prospect of dissolving the library, which was “like a stain on our community, that a community would go so far as to even consider to even put the question on the ballot,” said Ms. Patton, who has spent two decades shepherding the library into its current form. It was “such an extreme choice.”

But Ms. Ruffcorn has no intention of ending what has become one of the most dramatic book battles in the U.S., a skirmish that has divided neighbours, upended local politics and shown how difficult it has become to find middle ground even among small-town conservatives.

The 2,500 people in Dayton, Wash., live beneath the gaze of the Green Giant, a 100-metre-tall figure built onto a hill by volunteers that commemorates the region’s agricultural history. The Green Giant plant here was once the biggest asparagus cannery in the world. Work in the fields made Dayton a destination for migrants as early as the 1940s. Today, people are as likely to come for the wineries, although the politics lean decidedly to the right. In 2020, Donald Trump won 70 per cent of the votes in Columbia County, where Dayton is located.

The Columbia County Library occupies a unique place here. Until the arrival of home broadband this September, it had the fastest internet in town. Without a local FedEx or UPS outlet, the library remains the town’s de facto print shop.

So when a friend told Ms. Ruffcorn that it contained inappropriate children’s books, she thought: “Oh my gosh, these are terrible – but this is an easy fix.”

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Ms. Ruffcorn e-mailed then-director of the library, Todd Vandenbark, and asked him to move the books, which were located in the basement, where children and young adult collections are kept. Adult books are on the main floor.

Mr. Vandenbark refused. Constitutional protection for free speech, he said in an interview, require libraries to serve all users. To move a book from its intended section, he said, would violate that principle. “What a library cannot do, and what is illegal by the First Amendment in the United States, is for one parent to tell other readers what they can and cannot access,” he said.

For Ms. Ruffcorn, that initial rejection “set the mama bear alarms off.”

She began to attend library board meetings. Supporters filled out official forms requesting reconsideration of library materials. Ms. Ruffcorn said she did not support banning books, but others seemed to want books stripped from shelves. One decried titles that were “culturally divisive, sexualizing + grooming children for sex when they are too young to make these decisions.” Another wrote to oppose “books that encourage reverse racism upon white people should not be part of our local library.” Few had examined the materials they were criticizing, with one writing: “I’ve read enough to make an educated opinion online.”

The library board decided it would be wrong to move, or remove, the books. Board chair Jay Ball grew frustrated with Ms. Ruffcorn, who refused to accept the board’s reasoning.

“Her position is so extreme that I have a hard time acknowledging it,” he said. “She’s just another one of the thousands of people we serve. We listen to her. But it doesn’t mean we’re going to do what she wants.”

A local auto mechanic who became involved with local Democratic party organizing after the election of Mr. Trump, Mr. Ball sees himself as a defender of the institution and its staff, but also of public spaces that reject pressure to cater what’s available to majority tastes, a notion he calls “quiet censorship.”

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“The mission is to serve anybody,” he said. “That’s where the differences come in. And that’s where the fights start.”

Those fights became ugly. Mr. Vandenbark was called a “pedophile” and a “groomer.” Ms. Ruffcorn was told she should burn in hell. Mr. Vandenbark left, citing the pressure.

His successor, Ellen Brigham, brought a different approach. Knowing the stakes were high, she moved some sexual education-related books to a parenting section – which remains in the basement – and relocated non-fiction young adult books to the adult section.

“It was definitely a battle for the survival of the library,” she said. “A lot of libraries across the nation are getting defunded. They’re getting huge budget cuts because of these issues.”

To Washington State Librarian Sara Jones, a decision to move books can be a reasonable accommodation. She has done it herself, decades ago, when someone expressed concern over the depiction of a scantily-clad mermaid in a book of children’s poems. “We moved it to the Dewey decimal classification for poetry,” Ms. Jones said.

Even the most staunch defenders of the library found some agreement with Ms. Ruffcorn. Amy Rosenberg, a local Democratic Party leader, recalled muting a Zoom call of a library board meeting where parents read aloud passages from books they wanted moved.

“I get it. I understand they don’t want kids to be exposed to that material. I don’t want my kids to be exposed to that material,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “Where they’re wrong is where they’re trying to make sure that nobody’s kids have access to it at all.”

And Ms. Brigham’s attempts at compromise achieved little. “Every step we made towards the middle, the other side would take a step back,” she said.

“They perceive a bunch of books that we have as being pornography, and we categorically disagree,” Ms. Brigham says. “So there’s no middle ground. I don’t really see how we can find the middle ground with that.”

What began as a few titles of concern has expanded to a catalogue of more than 100, one that mirrors a list produced by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group founded in Florida dedicated to fighting what it calls “woke ideology.” If those aren’t moved, Ms. Ruffcorn says, the entire young adult fiction section should be relocated upstairs with the adult collection.

The library says such a change would be a mistake that hurts young readers. Ms. Ruffcorn responded with the petition to vote on dissolving the library. She initially hoped to “show the board that we’re not just a few angry parents – that this is important and that they need to take it seriously,” she said. Instead, she said, the board became more hostile.

“I found it insulting, really,” she said. Those who convinced a court to snuff the ballot measure, she says, “silenced everyone in order to win.”

Ms. Ruffcorn would be happy with a library run by a pared-down staff that opens only a few days a week. She is now trying to remove Mr. Ball as library board chair. She is open to another ballot measure to dissolve the district.

“It’s not over,” she said. “We’re going to continue to be a thorn in the side of the library until they decide to make some changes.”

The book battles at the library were set against other political earthquakes around Dayton. After Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, a group called Columbia County Conservatives formed in the area, with a goal to “support an American First Republican agenda.”

Its language mirrored that of Mr. Trump, and it created a new power structure to promote favoured candidates and counter disfavoured projects. Those included a proposed walking and cycling trail (CCC-backed leaders argued it would provide entrance for the homeless) and plans for a YWCA-run child care facility (opponents said parents should raise their own children). Both the trail and the daycare were shelved.

In response, a more liberal-minded group formed neighbours United for Progress. It worked with a lawyer to fight the ballot initiative. It also began the work of community organizing, led by people such as Elise Severe, the daughter of conservative wheat farmers.

Worried rural neighbours would vote against the library, she began calling everyone she knew. She sought an appeal to reason and was surprised to discover a receptive audience. People agreed to post “farmers for libraries” and “ranchers for libraries” signs on their properties. Nearly all of them were Republicans.

“Our staunch Republican, conservative households – they’re over it. They are so sick of this far right group that think they’re the majority,” said Ms. Severe. “People are desperate for moderation.”

What took place here could hold wider importance. At the very least, Dayton will not set a national precedent for shuttering an entire library, said Ric Jacobs, a lawyer who represented the NUP, Ms. Severe and one other plaintiff against the ballot measure. “It shows that people generally don’t align with these fringe views,” he said, adding: “Sane and courageous voices prevailed.”

Still, not everyone has given up on the idea that consensus can be found. No one has worked harder for the library than Ms. Patton, who ensured its survival roughly 20 years ago when its DOS-based software system crashed, leaving staff to process check-outs by hand. In the time since, it has been transformed into a modern information space, and Ms. Patton believes the cancellation of the ballot measure has bought time to talk.

“I would love to have people maybe try to listen – maybe bring in a mediator or something to help our community work this out.” Compromise, she says, would mean everyone gives a little. The past year hasn’t given much cause for optimism. She nonetheless wants to try.

“We have too much division already in our country,” she said. “And in a small town, you feel it.”