More on Biden Admin activities on so-called "banned books"
Biden Dept. of Education's Office of Civil Rights took its cue from Biden himself
Last month More To The Story (MTS) reported the details on how the Biden administration, through its Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), targeted school districts that took action on inappropriate and often pornographic books after listening to parental complaints.
The long and short of that report showed OCR was investigating districts that take action on book challenges, in essence, deeming such challenges as having “created a racially and sexually hostile environment for students.” OCR’s investigations arguably are aimed at forcing district compliance to keep pornographic materials on library shelves but also setting up federal monitoring requirements for those districts, as evidenced by the Forsyth School district case.
This month, MTS looks to one of the roots of OCR’s activities: President Biden’s own official actions.
On June 8, coinciding with “Pride Month,” Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced “new actions to protect LGBTQI+ communities.”
That same month, the Bidens held a Pride event in which the administration later had to condemn a transgender TikToker for flashing their breasts on the lawn of the White House.
Among the “new actions” was “addressing book bans,” per the Fact Sheet published by the White House.
Protecting Americans from book banning. Across the country, our nation faces a spike in book bans – efforts that disproportionately strip books about LGBTQI+ communities, communities of color, and other communities off of library and classroom shelves. In fact, 2022 saw the highest number of book bans in 20 years. Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to the stigma and isolation that LGBTQI+ people and other communities face. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is announcing that to support its ongoing work to defend the rights of LGBTQI+ students and other underserved communities, it will appoint a new coordinator to address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students. That coordinator will work to provide new trainings for schools nationwide on how book bans that target specific communities and create a hostile school environment may violate federal civil rights laws.
More To The Story
The link in the Biden “Fact Sheet” of the "highest number of book bans" doesn't actually go to a list of book bans, but instead a total of book challenges for 2022 on the American Library Association's (ALA) website.
The ALA report doesn't mention that the majority of challenged books are pornographic in nature and refers to unnamed "censorship groups" that made the overall challenge number "skyrocket.”
CHICAGO — The American Library Association (ALA) today released new data documenting* 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 challenges reported in 2021.
A record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship, a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021. Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color.
Of the reported book challenges, 58% targeted books and materials in school libraries, classroom libraries or school curricula; 41% of book challenges targeted materials in public libraries.
The prevalent use of lists of books compiled by organized censorship groups contributed significantly to the skyrocketing number of challenges and the frequency with which each title was challenged. Of the overall number of books challenged, 90% were part of attempts to censor multiple titles. Of the books challenged, 40% were in cases involving 100 or more books
In April, ALA put out its top 10 "most challenged books" of 2022 and every single description of why the book was challenged is the line, "claimed to be sexually explicit."
These books are not "claimed" to be sexually explicit, they are sexually explicit. Reading excerpts on the radio or showing the images contained in these books on TV would get you kicked off the airwaves.
Also, the count is really 15 books that include a tie at number 5 and a four-way tie at number 10:
1. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
2. All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
3. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
4. Flamer by Mike Curato
5. (tie) Looking for Alaska by John Green
5. (tie) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
7. Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
8. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
9. Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
10. (tie) A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
10. (tie) Crank by Ellen Hopkins
10. (tie) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
10. (tie) This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson
The ALA also admits most challenges are by parents and involve public or school libraries.
In the last few months, the ALA has come under fire for attempting to suppress actor Kirk Cameron’s Aug. 5 Christian Brave Books nationwide event, “See You at the Library,” which was actually a huge success.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the head of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, had been documented in a June 8 online presentation giving suggestions on how to block Cameron’s Aug. 5 events from library public meeting rooms.
“You can limit access to meeting rooms to persons eligible to hold a library card in your community. You could make a priority for library-sponsored programs,” Caldwell-Stone said in the presentation posted on Library 2.0.
Caldwell-Stone told viewers to book or set up alternative programs on Aug. 5, thereby “making it unavailable for the public” to host Cameron’s event.
“You can limit access to meeting rooms to persons eligible to hold a library card in your community. You could make a priority for library-sponsored programs,” Ms. Caldwell-Stone said in the presentation.
The attempted suppression of Cameron’s event caught the eye of Congress.
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) along with Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Mike Braun (R-IN), sent a letter to Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Director Crosby Kemper on the ALA’s “blatant discrimination against religious publishers.”
The letter demanded Crosby launch an investigation into the ALA, which receives taxpayer dollars.
“It was recently revealed that the ALA, as part of their Library 2023 Worldwide Virtual Conference, gave guidance on how to deny the ability for individuals to assemble in public libraries to hold events organized by religious publishers,” the letter from the senators reads. “Specifically, the ALA is purportedly attempting to hinder the ability of Brave Books, a faith-based children’s book publisher, to access public libraries to host events with parents and children to teach kids about “faith, hope, and love,” as well as ‘pray[ing], sing[ing], and read[ing] Brave Books and other books of virtue’.”
“The ALA claims that Brave Books seeks to “censor LGBTQIA materials or disparage or silence LGBTQIA library users, [and] exploit the open nature of the library to advance their agenda.” To the contrary, the ALA is advancing a political agenda, not Brave Books,” states the letter. “Further, the ALA is doing so while receiving federal funds and actively promoting hotly contested events in public libraries, including “Drag Queen Story Hours” – events aimed at having scantily and/or exotically clothed adults read to children with the goal of introducing them to sexualized topics.”
The letter also notes that the ALA has an entire page dedicated to “Drag Queen Story Hour,” which includes a program session labeled “Reading Fabulously.”
There is clearly More To The Story here. Look for an additional installment on the ALA coming soon.