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A majority of the public agree with so-called woke positions on issues such as racial equality, immigration and sexual identity, according to the latest annual poll of British social attitudes, in the latest sign that once-marginal liberal views are increasingly mainstream.

Although such issues are used by Conservative politicians and the media to fuel culture wars and whip up antipathy towards a supposed politically correct cultural elite, the survey shows the balance of public opinion in Britain has shifted in favour of more inclusive attitudes over the past 20 years.

These suggest a rapid and significant shift in attitudes in Britain over recent decades. As a country we are as liberal as we have been at any point since this survey started in 1983, said the political scientist Sir John Curtice, a senior fellow at the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), which carries out the survey.

The surveys other key findings indicate public support for increased taxation and public spending, including on social security benefits, remained strong as Britain prepared to endure a punishing cost of living crisis. Support for redistributing income from the rich to the less well-off was at its highest levels for nearly 30 years.

The pro-tax and spending were shared across the political divide, with 61% of Labour voters and 46% of Tory voters in agreement. Overall, 52% said the government should raise taxes and invest more in health, education and social benefits.

The publics healthy appetite for state intervention, a legacy perhaps of the perceived success of Covid support measures, may suggest they will support new prime minister Liz Trusss 150bn cost of living support package. However, her support for tax cuts and disdain for redistributionary fiscal policies may be more jarring.

Our survey suggests the public faces the cost of living crisis with as much appetite for increased government spending as it had during the pandemic. Despite the marked increase in public expenditure during the pandemic, support for increased taxation and spending is relatively high, even among Conservative supporters, said Gillian Prior, NatCens chief executive.

The survey also revealed the striking degree to which socially liberal views were far more prevalent in London. A third of Londoners (34%) are socially liberal, compared with just 19% of those in urban areas outside the capital. Sarah Butt, a research director at NatCen, said: London looks very different from the rest of the country.

Culture war rows have become increasingly prominent in recent years, ranging from disagreements over Britains colonial legacy, to whether moves towards and racial, sexual and gender equality have gone too far, with anti-woke critics specifically targeting liberal institutions such as the BBC, universities and national charities.

The survey asked a range of questions around issues of Britishness, national pride, the economic and cultural effects of immigration, and attitudes over equal opportunities. Its findings included:

While most people had a strong sense of Britishness, more than half (54%) agreed it was not important to be born in Britain to be truly British up from 25% in 2013. Similarly 34% agreed Britain is a better country than most others, down from 54% in 2013.

The proportion of people stating that immigration was bad for the economy fell from 42% in 2011 to 20% in 2021. Those saying it was good rose from 21% to 50%. There were similar shifts in views on whether immigrants enriched or undermined Britains cultural life.

There was growing public support for the proposition that equal rights had not gone far enough for black and Asian people (45%, up from 25% in 2000). In contrast, the proportion who felt race equality had gone too far fell from 35% in 2000 to 19% in 2021. About a third felt things were about right..

73 % of people thought rights for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals had not gone far enough or were about right, compared with 62% who thought this in 2013.

About 64% of people thought rights for transgender people had not gone far enough or were about right compared with 34% who believed they had gone too far. The question had not been asked in previous years.

There was a further, and significant fall in the proportion of the public who agreed transgender people should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate, from 58% in 2016 and 53% in 2019, to 32% in 2021. However, the survey said the wording of the question had changed slightly after 2019 to make it clearer it wanted the publics views on the recording of sex on the birth certificate, rather than whether a person should have the broader right to change gender.

It may be that some people accept that people should be able to secure some form of legal recognition of their acquired gender but also believe that this should not involve changing the sex that is recorded on their birth certificate.

For the most part our indicators suggest that, whereas it might once have represented a widespread view, now the anti-woke position on culture war issues often appear to be more of a minority one, the survey found.

The relatively rapid change in views suggested it was not just generational, but that more older people were becoming more socially liberal.

Nonetheless, leave and remain supporters were divided in their views on culture war issues, the survey found. For example, 65% of Brexit supporters said it was important to be born in Britain to be fully British, compared with 34% of remainers.

While pushing a culture war agenda may successfully enthuse core Tory voters and potentially rekindle post-Brexit electoral divisions between remainers and leavers that audience appears to be diminishing, and there is no guarantee that the anti-woke effect will be powerful enough to win an election, the survey concludes.

Curtice said: Inevitably some people are uncomfortable with such change in society, and will quite reasonably look to politicians to express their concern. But we cannot assume the politicians who express that concern will find that their stance brings them electoral success.

Health service satisfaction down but faith in NHS principles strongLong waiting times for hospital and GP appointments and lack of government funding drove a dramatic decline in public satisfaction with the NHS in 2021. The 17-point year-on-year fall showed public satisfaction dropped to 36%, its lowest level since 1997. However, 76% supported keeping the NHS free at the point of delivery. Rationing of services and poor staff pay drove record public dissatisfaction in adult social care services (50%).

Support for change in the UK voting system?There was majority public support for the introduction of a proportional representation system for voting MPs into the House of Commons for the first time since the survey began in 1983. Just over half (51%) favoured reform, up from 27% in 2011). While a majority of Labour voters supported PR (61%) only 29% of conservatives favoured electoral reform.

Increasing concern over the environmentWorries over the climate crisis are increasing, with 40% saying they were very concerned, almost double the proportion in 2010. More than half (57%) said they were willing to pay to protect the environment either through higher prices, taxes or a cut in living standards. While 60% blame human activity for climate change, just 6% denied there had been any decline in the environment.

The 2021 British Social Attitudes survey consisted of 6,250 interviews with a representative, random sample of adults in Britain. It was conducted just under a year ago between 16 September and 31 October 2021.

This article was amended on 22 September 2022 to add details from the survey about sexual identity; this was referenced in an earlier version, but relevant figures had not been included.

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Majority of UK public agree with liberal views on race and sexual identity - The Guardian

Amidst a backdrop of global conflict, the culture wars continue to compel us. But whilst social and cultural issues are often hotly contested, our obsession with the culture wars may spell the end of progressive politics, writes Frank Furedi.

Even today, when the cost-of-living crisis haunts society, it appears that it is cultural conflicts that captures our imagination. Debates on gender ideology and trigger excites the media. Prominent figures from the past from David Hume to Edmund Burke are denounced for their complicity with slavery.

It is as if disputes about competing values, lifestyles and perceptions of cultural threat have come to dominate public life. The political vocabulary that has served western societies in the 19th and most of the 20th century has become exhausted and has been displaced by the idiom of culture. Even disputes that were once conveyed through the rhetoric of class, social injustice or ideology tend to come alive only when communicated through the grammar of culture. Attacks on the Bullingdon Clubs old boy culture or the culture of cronyism of Etonians are met with denunciation of the culture of entitlement or that of dependency culture. Hostility to the police is expressed through the denunciation of its canteen culture.

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When culture becomes politicised it tends to drag the personal dimensions of everyday life into the public domain to the point where what you wear, who you sleep with, what you eat and consume, how you bring up and feed your child or what you read are often presented and interpreted as political statements

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It is evident that it is through the contestation of norms and values and of cultural authority that conflicts of interests and disputes are expressed. But culture is not simply a medium for expressing disputes that have emerged in other domains of social experience. When culture becomes politicised it tends to drag the personal dimensions of everyday life into the public domain to the point where what you wear, who you sleep with, what you eat and consume, how you bring up and feed your child or what you read are often presented and interpreted as political statements. What in another context, Freud described as the narcissism of minor difference has acquired a ubiquitous presence in western society.

The Origins of the Culture Wars

Disputes informed by contrasting cultural values have a long history. However, as I note elsewhere it was during the 1950s that the unravelling of the prevailing political consensus in Western societies begun to open up the realm of values, lifestyle and personal life to conflicts that were hitherto conducted through the language of politics [1]. These disputes, which were motivated by competing claims to moral authority initially assumed the polarised form of a clash between traditional and moral values. In the 1960s these conflicts were further politicised and gained definition through the growth of the Counter-Culture and the backlash that it precipitated by their traditionalist and conservative opponents.

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At the time the main battlefield was the pre-political domain of private life. But throughout the 1970s disputes regarding family values, sexuality, inter-personal relations expanded and began to touch on attitudes to consumption and the environment. The politicisation of these values contained a powerful imperative towards intensifying the conflicts surrounding them. Because such conflicts touch on the fundamental principles that guide peoples conduct in their everyday life they have the potential to engage and mobilise peoples emotions. As Francis Fukuyama noted conflicts over values are potentially much more deadly than conflicts over material possessions or wealth' [2]. It is always possible to come to a sensible compromise over the way that material resources are divided up or the way that political offices are distributed. Values express a persons identity and beliefs to the point that if they are not affirmed an individual may experience it as a slight on their persona or as an existential crisis. That is why conflicts involving religion, value or moral claims are rarely resolved through compromise.[ii

One of the first important studies to draw attention to the significance of what would turn into the contemporary Culture Wars was Gabriel Kolkos 1968 study The Politics of War. In this text he drew attention to what he perceived as the cultural realignment of public life in the United States. According to Kolko this realignment in Americas public culture represented allegiances to different formulations and sources of moral authority. He claimed that these contrasting sentiments were expressed through the 'institutionalization and politicization of two fundamentally different cultural systems. Kolko pointed out that the battleground for the conduct of this conflict was now the pre-political domain of private life. And he warned that this conflict was not susceptible to the usual formulae of compromise because each side of the cultural divide operate with a different conception of the sacred and the mere existence of the one represents a certain desecration of the other. [3][iii]

The introduction of cultural conflict into American politics occurred sometime before they gained importance in other societies. But even in the 1970s it was evident that conflicts over culture would play an increasingly significant role in other societies. In Britain the tension between modernisers and traditionalists always lurked in the background. Samuel Beers study of this conflict, Britain Against Itself has as its main theme the decline of civic culture and of deference. Beer is aware that in this battle between modernity and tradition the latter has prevailed and he sensed that result of this technocratic turn would be the erosion of the British way of life. [4][iv

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In the literature on the Culture Wars the conflict was generally perceived as a split between orthodox and progressive view of morality. Divisions over issues that are considered moral dominate the Culture War, particularly in the United States. But the conflict is by no means confined to disputes about the family, sex, abortion or the role of religion. These are key issues for social conservatives and for movements that are hostile to the influence of traditional values in the private sphere. But the wider cultural critique of capitalism is far more directed at issues that transcend the private or pre-political sphere. It targets consumerism, materialism, the work ethic, technocratic ethos and numerous Enlightenment values such as individual autonomy, rationality and progress.

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Cultural norms and values define communities, their way of life and their members identity. These sentiments are internalised and become constitutive elements of who we are. Conflict over the family, sexuality and the conduct of intimate relationship has rendered cultural conflicts a dramatically personal character

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The politicisation of culture is directly connected to the exhaustion of ideological alternatives. By the early 1980s and certainly by the end of the Cold War it was evident that the emotional energies that were hitherto invested in political in political ideals were increasingly channelled into moral and cultural issues. At the time, Christopher Lasch pointed out that: Longestablished distinctions between left and right, liberalism and conservatism, revolutionary politics and reformists politics, progressives and reactionaries are breaking down in the face of new questions about technology, consumption, womens rights, environmental decay, and nuclear armaments, questions to which no one has any ready-made answers. New issues give rise to new political configurations. So does the growing importance of cultural issues.' Since the early 1980s the trends identified by Lasch have- if anything intensified and today issues such multi-culturalism, immigration, sexuality as well as life-style matters dominate public debate.

Deconstructing the Culture Wars

The politicisation of culture contains the potential for expressing conflicts and problems in a form that are difficult to resolve. Cultural norms and values define communities, their way of life and their members identity. These sentiments are internalised and become constitutive elements of who we are. Conflict over the family, sexuality and the conduct of intimate relationship has rendered cultural conflicts a dramatically personal character. The phrase personal is political expressed the shift towards the contestation of values prevailing in the private sphere. Conflict in the private and pre-political sphere resembles that which pertains to wider society in one very important respect. In both spheres the absence of consensus about fundamental norms and values creates the foundation for conflicts and divisions. Moreover the privatised manner in which these conflicts are experienced means that in some cases they can acquire an intensely personal and emotional character.

One reason why it is difficult to capture the dynamic of the culture war is that this conflict rarely assumes an explicit and systematic character. Numerous studies insist claims about the polarisation of culture are exaggerated and some even go so far as to deny its very existence [5]. Conservative denunciations of political correctness have been continually met with angry denial and the assertion that such charges represent the desperate attempt by backward looking fundamentalists to justify their prejudices. Cultural politics rarely recognises itself for what it is. It cannot acknowledge its ambition to monopolise moral authority. Although advocates of lifestyle and identity cause assert that they are tolerant, inclusive and pluralistic they cannot accept the moral legitimacy of their opponents. That is why in the United States where the Cultural War is most developed the language deployed by the protagonists is so intemperate and inflammatory.

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The politicisation of culture and disputes about the art of living encourage an intolerant, petty and self-serving attitude towards public life. There are no progressive causes that can be advanced through the medium of culture. Those who flatter themselves as enlightened and inclusive are no less complicit than their opponents in creating a climate of intolerance. The Culture Wars is bad news because regardless of the cause it encourages narrow minded and parochial thinking on the part of all of its all too eager participants.

Frank Furedis The Road To Ukraine: How The West Lost Its Way is published by De Gruyter next month.

[i]

[1] See F. Furedi (2004) First World War Still No End In Sight, Bloomsbury, p.161.

[ii] [2] Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History And the Last Man, The Free Press : New York. p.214.

[iii] [3] Kolko, G. (1968) The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1943-1945, (Vintage Books : New York).pp. 118,128, 131.

[iv] [4] Beer, Samuel (1982) Britain Against Itself: The Political Contradictions Of Collectivism, W.W. Norton & Company.

[5] See for example Fiorina, M.P. (2006) Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, Pearson Longman : New York.

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The culture war is killing progress | Frank Furedi - IAI

Southlake is in another cultural war, thanks to our state lawmakers.

As you might recall, Southlake, a community served by Carroll ISD, last year emerged at the epicenter of protracted, high-profile battles over critical race theory, district diversity policies and how to teach the Holocaust. The conflict was fierce, and healing is far from complete.

But when Patriot Mobile, which markets itself as Americas only Christian conservative wireless provider, recently donated In God We Trust posters to the Carroll ISD, the culture wars found a new battlefield.

The reason is a new state law that requires schools to hang posters with In God We Trust prominently displayed if someone donates a poster or framed copy to a campus. Authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, Senate Bill 797 was touted as an expression of patriotism and religious liberty.

Predictably, the pushback to Patriot Mobiles gift was swift. A Southlake parent, for example, attempted to donate In God We Trust signs written in Arabic and decorated with rainbow colors. However, school board president Cameron Bryan rejected that offer, saying that the schools already have enough posters displaying the national motto.

Boy, what an understatement.

All of this would be mildly amusing if it werent another disappointing example of adults pressing political agendas in public schools, this time with the express written approval of the state Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the measure into law.

This editorial board strongly favors teaching civics and government and supporting patriotism and civic responsibility in schools. Our nations history, warts and all, is important to teaching youngsters of their duties as citizens.

However, the poster flap doesnt represent the spirit of meaningful civics education. The posters are slogans, not learning tools, and are part of a bizarre requirement to local schools. Moreover, the posters lack context and promote political agendas while masquerading as expressions of patriotism, religion and speech.

We find it troubling that the In God We Trust law contains artfully crafted language to mandate that a specific poster with a specific inscription must be prominently displayed in schools if the gift comes from a private donor. What happened to local choice? We shudder to think what other specific mandates the next Legislature might have in mind, or that lawmakers have such an intense interest in decorating school buildings. Is this really how lawmakers should spend their time?

This editorial board had hoped for a year without the cultural, ideological and nakedly political battles that marred the past two years in school districts across the country. It is probably fair to say that most parents, regardless of their political leanings, believe that politically motivated agendas should not be fought out in their childrens schools. Yet that is precisely the conflict that the new law encourages and why it is so wrongheaded.

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Southlake rekindles culture wars with In God We Trust posters - The Dallas Morning News

Given the nations deep political divisions nowadays, it should come as no surprise that some state and local politicians from both sides of the aisle would seek to leverage their governments purchasing power to send messages to corporate America and play to their base by doing so. After all, its not their own money its the publics so why not exploit political power to advance ones partisan posturing?

The most common manifestations of these impulses to make political statements through public funds have historically been public pensions divestment campaigns, starting with South Africa in the 1960s, then with Sudan in the early 2000s and continuing up to this years Russia divestment wave. Critics would say that pension policies focused on corporations environmental, social and governance (ESG) profiles are liberals playbook strategy to pressure companies into bending to their political will. The same might be said about pension funds that avoid investing in firearms manufacturers.

The complaint and its a valid one in my view has always been that these political statements rarely work to the benefit of the pension funds and that the employers taxpayers are ultimately obligated to foot the bill for investment underperformance. That grievance is now popular with 19 Republican attorneys general. However, many ESG advocates would counterclaim that more-sustainable and farsighted corporate policies will produce better investment returns over the long term. That debate in pension-land doesnt look likely to end any time soon; we really cant properly evaluate investment efficacy in less than a decade or even two.

West Virginias legislature has followed suit with similar legislation. Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee have enacted similar laws, all focused on ESG and fossil-fuel extraction. Notably, Kentucky ranks 21st and Tennessee 27th among the states in oil production, so one must conclude that their blackball actions are largely political and not budgetary.

The magnitude of any fiscal impact on Texans debt service costs is a matter for empirical research, which has already begun at Wharton. The topic will probably make for a great doctoral dissertation someday, but we wont know hard numbers any time soon. With multiple states now involved, a fertile field for research has arisen.

In Florida, we have the now-notorious meddling in public finance by state politicians who decided to punish Walt Disney World for the companys public opposition to the states so-called Dont Say Gay law (in support of its employees) by stripping the financial powers of five special districts to rebuke Americas most-beloved family theme park.

Even local governments are getting into the act, including from the left side of the political spectrum. In Pennsylvania, Lehigh County may become the first entity to divest its assets and business from Wells Fargo because of the banks reported support of political candidates opposing abortion rights.

Some of these retaliatory measures may eventually run into First Amendment lawsuits, especially given that the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision equated companies free-speech rights to those of individuals. But given the deepening divisions in the American body politic these days, it doesnt require much imagination to expect that similar political blacklists and financial boycotts will continue to proliferate.

Im sure, for example, that well see a few local governments sympathetic to abortion rights adopt policies prohibiting travel reimbursement for attendance at professional conferences and training events in states that prohibit or severely restrict the procedure. Meanwhile, other governments may ban employee travel to conferences in states that provide sanctuary for abortion-seekers. Whats to stop similar internal policies from popping up with regard to visiting states with open-carry gun laws? At least in the case of conference attendance, most government workers can find alternative professional development opportunities elsewhere, and some of these events now include virtual attendance options in this pandemic era. But for financial services firms serving the public sector, and the efficient market competition they engender, there is no such workaround.

I dont pretend to have all the answers or a universal solution to the dilemmas that these examples present. But Im pretty sure that taxpayers will ultimately be ill-served when public-sector investments and financial transactions are subjected to political favoritism, which is what these back-in-your-face policies really are. The problem, of course, is that in the short run there is very little political downside for these interventions, and the financial costs will be diffuse and initially imperceptible. But that doesnt make it right or smart.

The Big Seven state and local government policy associations and their financial affiliates can do us all a favor by standing up to such partisan grandstanding with policy advisories that emphasize just how ill-advised and ultimately costly these culture war reprisals are likely to be and perhaps already have become.

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The Cost of Mixing Culture Wars With Public Finance - Governing

Anti-censorship protestors at a meeting of the Lafayette Library Board, defending a librarian who included queer teen dating in a book display in defiance of the board. John Burnett/NPR hide caption

Anti-censorship protestors at a meeting of the Lafayette Library Board, defending a librarian who included queer teen dating in a book display in defiance of the board.

LAFAYETTE, La. The culture war inside America's libraries is playing out in the monthly meetings of the Lafayette Library Board of Control. Conservative activists are demanding the removal of controversial books, librarians are being falsely accused of pushing porn, and free speech defenders are crying censorship.

The August meeting in Lafayette was fairly humdrum routine reports on the bookmobile, library hours, and plans for a new branch until the lectern was opened for public comments.

"Everything that has happened in the past 18 months with this board and to the library has basically been a dystopian nightmare," declared one unhappy library patron.

Since conservatives took over the Lafayette library board last year, the controversies have come fast and furious:

"Hold up your signs for Cara again," one speaker told the audience. "We don't support fascism in the Lafayette Public Library."

Lafayette Parish is deeply religious, conservative Trump country red as a boiled crawfish. So others in the community have applauded the board's rightward shift.

"I'm a father of four young children," said a man in a tie and blue blazer, "and my daughter found a cartoon book that was basically pornographic. It encouraged children to explore themselves in a variety of ways. It was in the children's section."

The father concluded, "These are local libraries which should reflect the prevailing local community standards."

For many critics, this is the crux: whose community standards?

A somber librarian named Connie Milton stepped up to the podium and explained that libraries are struggling to keep pace with societal changes that emphasize the inclusion of diverse genders, races, and sexual orientations.

"We just want everybody to be able to come into a library and see themselves represented. That's all we're doin'," she said to hearty applause.

Milton announced that she had just given her two weeks' notice.

"Morale is not good," she said. "People are afraid to lose their jobs."

Lafayette Parish is by no means unique. Across America, fractious debates over free speech in public and school libraries have turned these hushed realms into combat zones. Cops are regularly called to remove rowdy protestors.

Texas leads the country in book bans. In the towns of Katy and Granbury, uniformed peace officers came into school libraries to investigate books with sexual content after criminal complaints from citizens. And the school district in Keller, Texas, pulled 41 challenged books off its shelves, including a graphic adaptation of "Anne Frank's Diary," "Gender Queer: A Memoir," and the Bible.

Traditional-values groups are demanding the removal or restriction of books with explicit sex education, and books that unflinchingly document LGBTQ realities and the Black American experience. The American Library Association in its unofficial tally reports that challenges of library books have jumped fourfold, from 416 books in 2017 to 1,597 book challenges in 2021.

In Lafayette, the president of the library board is Robert Judge, a retired insurance claims adjustor and high-school science teacher, and a devout Catholic. He gets criticized for imposing conservative church teachings on library policy, for instance, regarding LGBTQ topics.

"I think the idea that I have to drop off my Catholic Christian worldview at the door when I walk into serving the public is silly," he said in an interview at his kitchen table.

Judge believes the library's mission should submit to a traditional notion of family values and community standards, not the other way around.

"This is where we get into the sticky ground," he said, "Do we allow a governmental agency and the library is a governmental agency to supersede parents' rights? And do we protect parents' rights, or do we just say, 'Well that's the stuff that we have and we put it anywhere and if your kid stumbles on it, it's not our problem?' "

Judge sought to have several books banned outright, but the board didn't go along with him. As a compromise, the library moved all 1,100 nonfiction books from the young adult section to the adult collections. No books have been banned, says Danny Gillane, director of the Lafayette Public Library System.

"I don't care if they [the board] want to censor the library, if I don't have to remove things from my collection," he said. "That is my goal is to keep all of the materials we have in the library."

But some critics consider making a book harder to find is a form of censorship.

"We don't need to refile it in another section like it's something shameful," said Christopher Achee, parliamentarian with the Louisiana Library Association.

"We encourage you as a parent to know what your child is reading," he said. "That parent has every right to tell that child, 'No, this isn't appropriate for you.' But that right ends when another parent comes in looking for that exact same information."

The changes at the library since conservatives took over the governing board have infuriated liberal patrons.

"We're really upset that the library is being used in the culture wars," said Jean Menard, a home-school mom who says she depends on Lafayette libraries for her two teenagers' education. Menard started an anti-censorship Facebook group, Supporters of Lafayette Public Libraries. The group has more than 2,000 members.

"It is not the board of control's position to micromanage the library," she said. "Librarians need to be able to manage the library. This is a public library. It's for everyone. [If] they don't like the programs or materials, don't attend, don't check out the material!"

That argument has gone nowhere with conservatives on a crusade to cleanse Louisiana libraries. Standing in their way can have severe consequences.

Amanda Jones, president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, made a speech against censorship and now she says she's hounded by conservative activists on social media who say she advocates pornography. John Burnett/NPR hide caption

Amanda Jones, president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, made a speech against censorship and now she says she's hounded by conservative activists on social media who say she advocates pornography.

Last month, a middle-school librarian named Amanda Jones stood up and spoke out against censorship at a meeting of the library board where she lives and works in Livingston Parish, near Baton Rouge.

"The citizens of our parish consist of taxpayers who are white, black, brown, gay, straight, Christian, non-Christian people from all backgrounds and walks of life," she said in prepared remarks. "No one portion of the community should dictate what the rest of the citizens have access to."

She concluded, "Hate and fear disguised as moral outrage have no place in Livingston Parish."

Though 19 other people spoke up against censorship at the meeting, Jones's speech got all the attention. She's won several national Librarian-of-the-Year awards and is currently president of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians. But she was completely unprepared for what happened.

"A few days later," she said, "I open the internet and there were pictures of me, awful memes, saying I advocate teaching erotica and pornography to 6-year-olds. It gave my school's name. None of that is true. I gave a blanket speech on censorship. And they decided they wanted to make me a target."

"They" is Citizens for a New Louisiana the same group behind the conservative takeover of the Lafayette library board. The group has harshly criticized Jones on its Facebook page which has 19,000 followers for defending books they consider obscene and inappropriate for children.

Michael Lunsford is director of Citizens for a New Louisiana, which he describes as a government accountability group.

In his office in Lafayette, he pulls out one of the controversial sex-ed books, "Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human."

"We have this page that actually shows intercourse," he said, showing an illustration. "Then we have things like this that have closeups of genitalia. We've got a page here on masturbation and how to do it."

"Any reasonable person who looks at this material I hope would say an 11-year-old doesn't need to see this," he said.

Michael Lunsford, director of a conservative citizens group, has pushed to remove graphic sex education books they consider inappropriate for children, and he says anyone who disagrees with him is promoting smut. John Burnett/NPR hide caption

Michael Lunsford, director of a conservative citizens group, has pushed to remove graphic sex education books they consider inappropriate for children, and he says anyone who disagrees with him is promoting smut.

In ultra-conservative Louisiana, sex education in public schools, grades 7 to 12, is at the discretion of the local school board, with an emphasis on abstinence until marriage and no discussion of abortion or homosexuality.

But why attack a librarian for a book that's in her library? Is defending a graphic sex ed book the same as promoting smut?

"I don't know that we attacked her personally," Lunsford said. "We asked a question: What type of influence does she have over what our children see in school libraries as the president of the association? I think that's a valid question."

In the current toxic political climate, school librarian Amanda Jones says she has begun to fear for her life. When asked how the social media onslaught has affected her, she broke into sobs.

"It's horrible. My anxiety is through the roof. I live in constant fear that some person that they've incited is going to come and get me or get my child. Or come up to the school where I work and harm a child. It's been a month of this and it just won't stop."

Last week, Amanda Jones sued Michael Lunsford, Citizens for a New Louisiana and a local individual she says is trolling her. The lawsuit asks for a state district court judge to issue a temporary restraining order to stop what it calls the harassment and defamation.

Meanwhile, with their successes in Lafayette, Lunsford's group plans to expand its campaign to purge library books and programs that it finds offensive in Louisiana's other 62 parishes.

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Cultural war moves to libraries as some groups demand removal of books. - NPR