If Republicans are hellbent on “protecting” children from one thing, it’s queer people. Whether that means isolating trans folks from bathrooms and locker rooms, refusing to let kids play on sports teams with certain other kids, or barring educators from teaching accurate, inclusive information, conservatives want to make sure that not only their kids, but everyone’s kids, live as insular and close-minded lives as possible. Lovely.
As Daily Kos has continues to cover, Republicans at all levels of office (and for that matter, folks who aren’t even overtly involved in traditional politics) are going after books. Books by and about LGBTQ+ people and people of color, specifically, though books about sexual health and sex education are often swept up in book bans too. Conservatives seem to have two lines of attack when it comes to book bans: removing books from public libraries and from public classrooms.
One example comes from Connecticut, where as reported by LGBTQ Nation, a children’s biography of drag queen RuPaul, Who is RuPaul? by Nico Medina, has been removed from library shelves due to the complaint of exactly one parent. This book is part of a series of biographies for kids aimed at readers in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades.
The parent (a father who lives in a rural town outside of Hartford) wanted the book removed because he feels it contains “sexually provocative drawings,” per a Facebook post by Colchester First Selectman Andreas Bisbikos.
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In an interview with The Daily Beast, Bisbikos explained he received the complaint from a parent via email. The parent felt it wasn’t placed in an “age-appropriate” section of the library. The selectman told the outlet the book is still available, but it has been “temporarily removed” from circulation until it’s determined where it’s best to shelve it.
Kate Byroade, who serves as the director of the library, however, was not happy about this. Byroade also spoke with the Beast in an interview and said the book has not even been checked out yet. Byroade explained the book was part of a Pride Month display. She went on to say every librarian reads a book once a complaint is filed over it, but that Bisbikos was trying to get the book removed from shelves right away was ultimately an overreach and disruption of the library’s internal process.
“He completely bypassed how you’re supposed to handle things,” Byroade told the outlet, adding that this is an “exact definition of censorship.”
Bisbikos told the Beast that the book isn’t being “censored or banned” but that he simply wants it to have a more “age-appropriate” place in the library. He again described the images in the book as “sexually provocative.” He then claimed to the outlet that if the image was found in a book about George Washington (yes, George Washington), he would have had an “identical response.”
Sure.
Here’s the thing. Conservatives love to see LGBTQ+ people as innately more sexual and inappropriate than cisgender, heterosexual people. This is why conservatives don’t mind at all that students know their teachers are married, for example, provided that they’re in a straight-presenting marriage. This is why conservatives don’t mind putting babies in “lady killer” pajamas—assuming that baby is a boy. Conservatives don’t see anything inappropriate about their own orientation because they see it as the “normal” default.
Book censorship is, in itself, a form of violence. Denying people the ability to learn and connect is violence. That said, conservatives are also unleashing some very literal violence onto public libraries in pushing this dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. For example, we’ve now covered numerous instances of the Proud Boys (yes, the far-right hate group) invading book events for kids and terrorizing families who just want to read. I’d say Republicans should be ashamed, but we know they won’t be.
