library – The Secular Librarian

Findings from a Gallup poll out a few days ago suggest that the total population of adults in the United States who identify as LGBTQ has risen to over 10 million, or 4.1%. This number is up from 3.5% in 2012.

That is a pretty statistically significant bump.

Key findings from the poll include that the number of millennials who identify as LGBTQ+ has risen from 5.8% in 2012 to 7.3% in 2016, and that more women are identifying this way now than previously.

From a LIS perspective, this raises the question of what the percentage of our public library collections are also LGBTQ-related – and clearly so.

Last year, LGBTQ+ books dominated the ALA’s banned books list, according to a PinkNews article, with nearly half of the list having LGBTQ themes as the reason the books were challenged.

The first major census research on the estimate size of the LGBT Americans was conducted in the early 1990s by organizations such as the Kinsey Institute, the CDC (via the American National Health Interview Survey), and the groundbreaking research done by sociologist Edward Laumann in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The problem with these early studies is that they suffered from the phenomenon of under-reporting. Shame, social stigma, and the danger of legal ramifications kept most LGBTQ+ people in the closet, so it was difficult to get a clear picture of the true size and shape of the population. Even now, in many places social pressure and stigma still keep many people from openly identifying and reporting as LGBTQ+.

Let’s look briefly at some other demographic data.

In 2011, according to the Pew Research Center, Americans of Asian descent made up 5.8% of the total population.

The Steinhardt Social Research Institute estimates that in 2015 the total Jewish population in the United States was over 7 million (around 2.2% of the total U. S. population). Pew’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that only 0.7% of the population was Buddhist; the same for Hindus.

Point is, most libraries would never hesitate to include or catalog books based on their ethnic, racial, or religious content. And yet it’s difficult to get an accurate number of books in a public library collection that have LGBTQ themes or content.

4.1% is a sizable chunk of the U. S. population, and it’s time that librarians stopped being afraid to include those books in their collections.

More good news for fans of fantasy role-playing games (or RPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder!

An article by Merrill Miller posted last week on The Humanist presents the findings of a recent study published in The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion that explores the link between imagination and irreligiosity.

There is a growing body of literature exploring the links between imaginative play and cognitive and creative development (I’ve included a sample below), on everything from teaching chemical formulas to middle schoolers to helping students learn diplomacy.

Organizations like The RPG Research Project are spearheading research on the positive effects of collaborative gaming on ethics, problem solving, empathy, racial and gender stereotype attitudes, and verbal and writing skills. There are also therapeutic applications, from treating PTSD, depression, bi-polar, and autism-spectrum disorders.

To my knowledge though, this is one of the first studies to examine the impact of role-playing and storytelling on current religious status. Miller reports in the article that “individuals who did not change their religious or nonreligious identification were less likely to have engaged in pretend play. Converts and switchers, however, were more likely to have played pretend, and apostates were the most likely to have often engaged in pretend play.”

As a librarian, I’m interested in the educational and creative applications of RPGs, especially for children and teens. However, as a secular American, I can’t help thinking of the words of Thomas Jefferson to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787: “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

I had a fantastic conversation at ALA in San Francisco with two guys at the Paizo Publishers booth. They were thrilled to hear that I’m a newcomer to role-playing and to Pathfinder, and that I’d just started building my first character—a half-elf bard named Casevar (for your who-cares notebooks). I also learned that Pathfinder has a growing presence in the teen sections of many libraries, and that some librarians even keep a copy of the core rulebook as a reference material for in-library groups to use.

This gets to the core of our mission as librarians: that providing access to tools and information will help inspire, invest in, and produce better informed, curious, and compassionate individuals who are engaged and critical thinkers. RGPs such as Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder can reinforce this work through conversations about ethics and morality, experiencing consequences of one’s own and others’ actions, and the priorities of different qualities (such as intelligence versus strength or charisma) in a character in the context of group dynamics. It’s a remarkably complex and philosophical exercise!

I’m also curious if there are similar benefits to virtual cooperative gaming, but from my personal experience with Pathfinder campaigning, being at the same table, in person, is quite different from interacting online.

The Secular Librarian

Tag: library

4.1% of Americans now identify as LGBTQ

RPGs, imaginative play, and libraries

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