Libraries and intellectual freedom

Libraries are civic infrastructure. They are community anchors, knowledge commons, and engines of opportunity. For generations of kids— myself included— they were places where curiosity was encouraged and where knowledge opened doors that the world around you might not.

I’m part of the Reading Rainbow generation. I grew up in a culture that understood something simple but powerful: books are not something to fear. Knowledge is power.

Unfortunately, Utah’s libraries have been dragged into a manufactured culture war. My opponent, Ken Ivory, has been one of the key architects behind the state’s book ban efforts— turning libraries into a political battlefield instead of the refuge for learning and discovery they are meant to be.

And the truth is, this fight was never really about books.

Utah’s real education crisis is that roughly half of our students are not reading at grade level. Yet the loudest voices in the Legislature are spending their time banning books that are far beyond the reading comprehension of most of the students they claim to be protecting. That contradiction tells you everything you need to know. This is not about literacy. It is about political theater, culture war division, and the erasure of communities some politicians would rather pretend do not exist.

Libraries should not be weaponized this way. I oppose book bans because access to information is foundational to a free society. Parents absolutely have the right to guide what their own children read. That is normal. But the state has no business acting as a moral gatekeeper over ideas or narrowing the intellectual world available to everyone else.

Pluralism requires access to ideas, not enforced conformity. Protecting libraries means protecting intellectual freedom, protecting curiosity, and protecting the civic spaces where people of every background can learn, explore, and imagine a bigger future.

Protecting libraries is, ultimately, about protecting democracy itself... "but you don't have to take my word for it!"