Texas public school libraries are under pressure to remove some books, mostly those involving LGBT themes, topics, or characters, but some involving race and racism topics and others about general sex education or civics.
A list of over 800 books targeted by a Texas state legislator and one person’s commentary on it:
I remember the calls to ban books like Black Like Me when I was younger. There were so many books about drugs and sex, with socially unacceptable language, that no one questioned. It was clear to me even at a young age what the real issue was. Some things never change, sadly. Except that now the sex stuff gets banned, too. Because you know, if we get rid of the books, the issues they highlight disappear, too, right?
It is not like high school students need books or sex education classes to talk about sex… or some of them trying to figure it out on their own…
They are not banning books about sex. It is books about LGBTQ sex, or bodies that are not gendernormative.
It is all about control and fear.
My parents never censored what I read, and I read some doozies. I’d visit the public library every day in summer, check out five books, read them, and pick out more. Books offered me glimpses into other words and new ideas. There was so much that I didn’t feel comfortable asking my parents, so bless those books for answering those questions.
Who amongst us didn’t read Forever (published in ’74) or Flowers in the Attic (‘79)? The Outsiders? They’re still being read today, plus books acknowledging gender and sexual identity, race, violence, and so on.
As the girl in the NBC report said (kind of) off-camera, the school library is a safe space where she can read about LGBTQ+ and her parents can’t interfere.
Like @zeebamom , I read just about everything I could get my hands on. Even my strict, conservative parents never censored what I read. I am so grateful to them for that.
I think the whole banning books thing is ridiculous, especially when kids have access to the internet and can see the same content without any guidance and conversation.
I was a voracious reader as a kid and mine was as well. If I thought she was reading something more mature than her age, I read the book too and we had a conversation.
Hardly anything was off limits. (Although I do remember asking her to wait on reading 50 Shades 
).
Correct. Plenty of people create their own religion out of thin air and ignore the many evil things in the Bible. I am just talking about what the Bible actually says.
Have any of you actually read any of the books? Do you know what’s in them?
There are a few I’d pull off the shelf.
Sounds like the long list of books from the lawmaker was computer generated which is ridiculous but an easy way to appease some constituents without doing any work. So it’s basically useless or worse.
Sounds like Texas did have a pretty good way to take care of parent concerns about books which included a formal complaint and then system review of the book. It’s just not being followed–the system is broken.
Some of these books were not only in high school libraries where they may have a place but also in elementary and middle school libraries.
And not everybody who challenges a book is a Christian right-winger. Talk about stereotypes!
Some of these books may be ones that you dont want your child to read and may be explicit and should involve a conversation between parents and children while being read (but are certainly less explicit than what can easily be found on the internet). But many are literature and I shocked that a book that chronicles a family’s experience in the holocaust, Maus, has also been removed.
There’s a really popular book where a guy has sex with his two daughters. I can’t believe that every church in the country reads from this filth!
So much nuance is lost in the inflammatory “book banning” label. “Let kids/teens read whatever they want” is absolutely fine as a parenting philosophy, but schools have to be more judicious.
Any book, potentially, could be stocked at the town’s public library, but not every book belongs in a school library, and of course there are massive differences in what is developmentally appropriate in elementary school vs. middle school vs. high school. Some books may be fine to have in a school library for students to check out on their own, but should not be part of the official curriculum. A teacher or school might appropriately offer a book as an option (e.g., on a “pick one” list for summer reading or an after-school book club), while at the same time recognizing that the book should not be required reading for English class.
There’s nuance in the issue of “banning” LGBTQ books as well, particularly with regard to transgender themes. Many people, and not just Christian conservatives, are becoming increasingly concerned with the excesses of SOME transgender ideology, particularly with regard to the explosion of teen girls who are identifying as transgender and are often quickly, without appropriate mental health assessment and support, moving to life-altering medical treatments. This is a whole other topic, but see, e.g., the fairly recent opinion piece in the Washington Post written by two clinicians in the transgender field, one of whom is herself a transgender woman.
There is an incredibly small number of children who fall into the category of transgender “impressionable teen girls” and it is terrifying that there are people who think that children are allowed to transition medically without an extraordinary medical and psychological evaluation. The number of trans people who medically transition and then detransition is extremely small. However, there are a much larger number of children and teens who are gender non conforming who read these books and realize that there are people out there like them, which results in decrease in depression and suicidal ideology. And this thread seems to be concentrating on LGBTQ issues, but there are a large number of books that are banned on BIPOC experiences (including Michelle Obama’s biography!!!) and non christian experiences.
The WaPo opinion piece directly contradicts many of your assertions. I don’t want to sidetrack this thread with transgender issues not related to book banning, so I will leave the topic with a link to the WaPo piece. And here’s an excerpt giving the authors’ background and expertise:
We are both psychologists who have dedicated our careers to serving transgender patients with ethical, evidence-based treatment. But we see a surge of gender dysphoria cases like Patricia’s — cases that are handled poorly. One of us was the founding psychologist in 2007 of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States; the other is a transgender woman. We’ve held recent leadership positions in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which writes the standards of care for transgender people worldwide. Together, across decades of doing this work, we’ve helped hundreds of people transition their genders.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/24/trans-kids-therapy-psychologist/
Interesting that a thread about book banning – which at its core is an attempt to silence or marginalize people with different points of view and different life experiences, to quash any ideas or opinions that might go against the mainstream – has a post calling a CC user a “deranged bigot.”
The WaPo authors note a doubling a trans-identified youth over five years, and they (see their qualifications in my post above) are concerned about it. Are they “deranged bigots” as well?
I broke my pledge to “leave it” but responding to vitriolic name calling is actually on topic for a thread about book banning, in my opinion.
paywall, I agree we should move beyond this since it is not the point of this thread
I don’t have incredibly high expectations for literary works in school libraries. People may or may not have the same standards as we do. I do expect books to be age appropriate. If it’s an artistic photography book with nudie pictures, that shouldn’t be in an elementary school…common sense. I would expect something like that to be in a college library. Books with graphic violence, explicit sexual “stuff,” or just plain dysfunctional craziness…maybe the author should see a counselor. But “those” kind of books don’t belong in schools.