Newsweek is touting the lie this week that the Left is banning books too.
Fact check:
ONLY Republican governors, state legislators, and school boards are banning books.
And they are doing more banning and persecuting than we’ve ever seen before.
I posted and blogged last year about my ‘paranoid’ fear that the increase in book banning in schools would lead to other hostilities toward the LGBTQ, immigrant, and BIPOC communities and as we now see, it’s all part of a horrifying new wave of extremist throwback legislation accompanying and increasing the school-level censorship.
Families with trans kids are being attacked and hounded and having to flee their home states. Young women including victims of rape are being arrested and charged for crimes when they attempt to seek abortions, along with those remaining few who dare to help them. And yes, you cannot actually use the word ‘gay’ in many schools or acknowledge the history of slavery in America.
It’s ironic that while we rush (rightly) to help those who fight for democracy in Kyiv, Things are spinning out of control on the human rights front at home—and it usually does seem to start with book banning and censorship, doesn’t it? That’s the path away from democracy. That’s how Putin manages things and how Republicans now do too.
And while conservatives and Christian zealots think they’re only depriving Others of their rights and safety, they will eventually find that when you shift toward totalitarianism no one is autonomous, safe, and free in the end.
Because it really is true that each person’s civil liberties and rights are all people’s civil liberties and rights.
Too bad that a blog like this can no longer be discussed by high school students across half or more of this great nation.
Alex Hiam is the author of Silent Lee and the Adventure of the Side Door Key and Silent Lee and The Oxford Adventure (available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon, or at your local bookstore). He’s also a parent and teacher who currently lives in Putney, Vermont.
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