2022 may go down as the year of momentum to ban books, with conservative groups Moms for Liberty, Daughters of the Confederacy and Utah Parents United better networked, better funded and successful in determining what children can access at school or public libraries. And 2023 may be the year of strong, more organized pushback.<\/p>\n
Penguin Random House, authors, parents and PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Escambia County School District and School Board in Pensacola, Florida, for removing 10 books related to race and the LGBTQ community.<\/p>\n
This lawsuits puts muscle into fights that lone parents and librarians can\u2019t do on their own.<\/p>\n
Plaintiffs alleged both the First and 14th Amendments were violated by \u201cdepriving students of access to a wide range of viewpoints, and depriving the authors of the opportunity to engage with readers and disseminate their ideas to their intended audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s confusing in the parental rights push in banning books is the actual role of parents. Sure, every book is worthy of discussion and curation, whether content is appropriate, meaningful and valuable. But parents remain in charge.<\/p>\n
Keith Flaugh, one of the founders of Florida Citizens Alliance, said, \u201cThis is not about banning books, it\u2019s about protecting the innocence of our children and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
But parents do<\/em> decide what children read. That\u2019s in our parental job descriptions. This talking point of the government indoctrinating our children is silly. The government is not a co-parent. No institution can indoctrinate our children unless we make room for it by not being connected and caring with our children.<\/p>\n We know who\u2019s in charge \u2013 and it\u2019s certainly not the government. We don\u2019t hand over any authority because books we find distasteful or offensive sit on shelves.<\/p>\n Children are curious and will sneak peeks at things parents don\u2019t want them to see, more so if subjects are taboo. But that doesn\u2019t mean we lost the battle to raise amazing citizens. Responsible parents talk with their children about how other people live, what their choices are, what\u2019s natural for them, along with ideas we abhor and fear. Our children turn to us when they have questions. We don\u2019t fear indoctrination.<\/p>\n If our sense of morality is tested in a book, we\u2019re not threatened. Quite the opposite. It\u2019s just a window into a conversation. We\u2019re confident our children won\u2019t be led astray.<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t learn their values from books \u2013 they learned from us.<\/p>\n No doubt, book bans will become a 2024 campaign issue. We envision a debate moderator in front of candidates, holding up the well-loved book, \u201cAnd Tango Makes Three,\u201d about two male penguins that adopt a baby penguin, and asking: \u201cWhere does this land for you? Heartwarming or disgusting?\u201d<\/p>\n No matter that the book is based on a true story from the Central Park Zoo. It made the \u201cPorn in Schools Report\u201d from Florida Citizens Alliance that lists books that they say contain \u201cindecent and offensive material.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, other groups, including Florida\u2019s Freedom to Read Project, are energized and urging members to attend board meetings and track the work of groups like Florida Citizens Alliance.<\/p>\n \u201cPornography\u201d is being thrown around too loosely. The actual definition from the Cornell University Law School is \u201cmaterial that depicts nudity or sexual acts for the purpose of sexual stimulation.\u201d Or in many other accepted definitions, \u201cintended to arouse.\u201d In the struggle to apply the definition, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart most famously said, \u201cI know it when I see it.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019d bet good money penguins were not involved.<\/p>\n For some readers, there\u2019s value in reading about horrific situations that matched their own. Young adult author Patricia McCormick\u2019s novel \u201cSold\u201d is banned widely for being \u201cpornographic.\u201d The book is based on interviews with girls in India and Nepal who had been sold into slavery. McCormick\u2019s own experiences of sexual assault inform the book, too.<\/p>\n These girls didn\u2019t share experiences of rape to \u201carouse\u201d or \u201cstimulate\u201d anyone. Instead, they shed light on child trafficking. McCormick said students approached her and shared their own stories of abuse. Reading about the plight of trafficked girls nudged these students to report incidents and get help.<\/p>\n Yes, it\u2019s a tough read. Rather than being offended by the book, how about we\u2019re offended by the fact that this is going on in the world, including in the U.S. To ban this book and look away is to deny the horrendous reality of it.<\/p>\n Be outraged. Be the parent, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2022 may go down as the year of momentum to ban books, with conservative groups Moms for Liberty, Daughters of the Confederacy and Utah Parents United better networked, better funded and successful in determining what children can access at school or public libraries. And 2023 may be the year of strong, more organized pushback. Penguin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33900,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33899\/revisions\/33900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33899"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}