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John Wahl wants you to believe he’s just a concerned citizen. But when a man leads a campaign to censor award-winning books, defund public libraries, and impose a narrow religious worldview on state policy, what else should we call him?
In a recent open letter to the people of Fairhope, Wahl — who chairs both the Alabama Public Library Service and the Alabama Republican Party — insisted that “some have tried to label the APLS Board as ‘far-right radicals.’” He called the criticism unfair. He called it misinformation. But the most compelling evidence that the label fits is Wahl’s own letter.
The APLS board, under his leadership, voted to withhold state funding from the Fairhope Public Library over two novels located in the youth section: Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson and Sold by Patricia McCormick. These are not salacious books. They are searing, award-winning accounts of girls who are trafficked, abused and manipulated — written to help teens understand, identify and escape those very threats.
But according to Wahl, hearing excerpts from these books left him “heartbroken,” calling them “some of the most vulgar and sexually explicit content” he’s ever encountered. That claim says far more about Wahl than it does about the books. Because what he labels vulgar is, in truth, the reality that too many children — especially girls — face every day. These books don’t endanger children. They prepare them for the dangers adults so often ignore.
Wahl insists that “no child should be exposed to this type of content without the full awareness and consent of their parents.” But libraries don’t force books into kids’ hands. Parents already have the ability to guide their children’s reading. This isn’t about parental rights. It’s about government control. And it’s being enforced not through community engagement, but through the raw power of the state.
Let’s not forget how this defunding threat began: after several members of Clean Up Alabama spoke during a public comment period, accusing the library of violating new administrative codes. These aren’t experts. They are activists, part of a political pressure group trying to force public libraries across Alabama to abandon the American Library Association, remove LGBTQ+ books and treat any mention of gender, trauma or identity as “obscene.”
Clean Up Alabama has labeled the ALA a “Marxist organization,” called for libraries to blacklist dozens of titles and demanded compliance with their own moral code. And John Wahl? He’s not just aligned with their goals — he’s been a featured participant in their events. He dismissed concerns about his involvement last year, claiming it was just “open dialogue,” and that he had “no agenda.” Yet here he is, using the weight of the state library board to implement Clean Up Alabama’s agenda nearly verbatim.
In his letter, Wahl lays out “three common-sense” steps he wants the Fairhope Library to adopt: remove certain books from youth sections, establish a parent-led book review process, and require a card system so parents can block their children from checking out “adult” books. But these aren’t common-sense solutions. They are political tools designed to intimidate, isolate and restrict.
This is not about protecting children. It’s about policing thought. It is not about keeping kids safe. It’s about keeping them in line.
It’s not about parents’ rights. It is about politicians’ power.
Nowhere is the hypocrisy more obvious than in the Republican Party’s constant shrieking about “indoctrination.” The very people who cry wolf about brainwashing in schools are the ones now demanding government-enforced conformity in public libraries. They are so fixated on sex and children that it borders on obsession — projecting their own anxieties onto every book that mentions puberty, consent, gender identity or trauma.
Their crusade isn’t limited to Fairhope. The Alabama GOP’s 2025 legislative agenda calls for banning so-called “transgender indoctrination” and enforcing “female-only access” to public facilities — code for rolling back rights, silencing LGBTQ+ youth and punishing difference.
This is about control. Control of libraries. Control of schools. Control of children’s minds. They accuse others of grooming, yet seek to groom the state itself into a reflection of their narrow, weaponized version of Christianity.
And this, too, has a history. In 1821, Heinrich Heine warned, “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people.” Every authoritarian movement begins with the suppression of stories. It begins with censorship disguised as morality. It begins when people like John Wahl stop pretending to care about children — and start using them as pawns in their ideological war.
So no, John Wahl isn’t being unfairly labeled. He’s being accurately described. If he wants to prove otherwise, he can start by stepping away from the censorship table, disavowing Clean Up Alabama, and respecting the professional judgment of librarians and educators.
But until that happens, let’s call this what it is. A radical attempt to control what children read, how they think and who they become. Not through education, but through erasure.
What’s happening in Fairhope is not the end of this story. It’s the beginning of a purge. And if we don’t speak up now, Alabama’s libraries won’t be places of learning — they’ll be monuments to silence.
