Conservative White Parents Want the Freedom to Ban Books – The New Republic

Around the same time that the Goddard school district temporarily bent to the wishes of one irate parent, the Spotsylvania County School Board in Virginia ordered the removal of books deemed sexually explicit. Two parents, Christina and Robert Burris, had complained about the books on offer at school libraries, in particular books with LGBT themes. Results for gay, 172. Results for heterosexual, two, Christina Burris told the school board. She continued: One of the two books is actually Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil, which is about a Nigerian gay boy. Results for pedophilia, 16. Lesbian, 84. Jesus, 19, but half of them are about Muslims. (The book she referenced is in fact called Speak No Evil, by Uzodinma Iweala.) Apparently, pulling these books from the shelves wasnt enough for two of the countys school board members: I think those banned books should be thrown on the fire, Rabih Abuismail said, adding that keeping these books on the shelves meant schools would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ. Another school board member, Kirk Twigg, said he wanted to burn them so we can identify with our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.

That same week, school officials in North Kansas City, Missouri, pulled two books with queer characters and themes, All Boys Arent Blue, by George M. Johnson, and Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (novels also targeted by the Goddard parent), from high school libraries, after parents with the Northland Parent Association, a group that formed to fight school mask mandates but which has since branched out into book banning, loudly voiced their complaints. At one meeting at the end of October, James Richmond, the president of the Northland Parent Association, brought along enlarged pages from Bechdels graphic novel, and compared offering the book to committing a sexual crime. If I was to hand this material out to a minor or read or give any of these books to a minor, I would be charged with solicitation of a minor, Richmond said, before moving on to read aloud what he characterized as crap to the room. To Richmond, for the schools libraries even to have age-appropriate novels with LGBT characters and LGBT characters who think about and have sex on their shelves constituted grooming. (This is an idea that carries more than a whiff of Anita Bryants belief that gay and lesbian teachers wished to recruit schoolchildren, a central tenet of Save Our Children, her 1970s antigay rights campaign.) That is something you guys are pushing in our schools, he added. To another parent in the group, these novels were, again, pornography.

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Conservative White Parents Want the Freedom to Ban Books - The New Republic