As councils increasingly become battlegrounds for heated culture wars, another local government is grappling with a push to ban children’s books about sexuality and gender.

Albany Council in Western Australia will vote this month to restrict several books at its public library that are focused on sexual education for teenagers, including Welcome to Sex by Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes, and Sex: A Book for Teens.

The move to ban the books is being spearheaded by Keeping Children Safe Albany, an organisation led by former One Nation candidate Michelle Kinsella.

It has forced the council vote after a special meeting of electors.

Organisations such as Equality Australia and Albany Pride have accused proponents of the ban of engaging in a moral panic and linking LGBTQI+ people with pedophilia.

Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences at RMIT University, said that even if people feel strongly about a book that goes against their values, it does not mean it should be removed for everyone.

“That is where educating the public and ensuring that it’s not political motivations that are driving those decisions is really important,” she said.

“Libraries should be free to make decisions in light of professional standards and collecting in the best interests and needs of the wider community.”

Changing values

Timothy Jones, an associate professor of history at La Trobe University and president of the Australian Queer Archives, said that although community concerns about children’s innocence and sexuality had peaked at different times, there were comparisons with both Cumberland Council’s failed attempt to ban a sex education book and the efforts in the US to ban books by the conservative group Moms for Liberty.

“It is clear that conservative Christian and gender conservative groups are well networked internationally and they learn from each other and follow each other’s leads,” he said.

“What works in one place will be tried out in a new jurisdiction to see if that will also work.”

He said community understandings and expectations about sexuality and gender identity have been rapidly changing.

“Tasmania decriminalised sex between men in 1997 and 20 years later we’ve got marriage,” he said.

“People with conservative social values are struggling to keep up with those changes.”

In 2021, Moms for Liberty, a conservative organisation in the US, launched a campaign to ban books related to sexuality, gender, race and history within local councils.

Jones said that there had been similar pushes in Australia, including during the Safe Schools controversy.

“People were talking about how it was sexualising children, but actually, the safe schools program gave teachers the resources to deal with homophobia and transphobia at school,” he said.

“These panics about children aren’t really child-centred, they are centred on adults’ fears about social change, but not the child’s wellbeing.”

The future

Albany Council’s councillors will make the final decision on the ban later this month, but the battle against sex and LGBTQI+ education is unlikely to go away any time soon.

“This certainly has a very long history. It’s not that this is new,” Given said.

“Ever since books and reading have been with us, we’ve had people trying to govern what should be read.”

Cumberland Council got strong blowback from the community, ultimately resulting in the decision being reversed. Photo: Getty

Jones said that it was new, however, to see it entering local politics.

“Local authorities in Australia don’t have that much purchase on these issues though, compared to the United States or the United Kingdom,” he said.

“Optimistically perhaps, these types of political campaigns have worked overseas, but may not have the same scope for change in Australia.”