And this, dear fandom, is why censorship is A Bad Thing
Gov. Abbott Calls Books “Pornography,” Attempts To Remove LGBTQ+ Titles From Schools
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ® has called on the state’s school boards to investigate and eradicate books with subject matter related to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms.
[…]
Cason shared his statement on Twitter, referring to “Gender Queer” and other books that “may violate the Penal Code” as “criminal activity” that “should not be made available to children by the actual people who are tasked in educating them and keeping them safe from harm.”
[…]
In the letter, Krause included a list with the titles of roughly 850 books that were largely related to topics of sexuality, gender identity, race, and sexual health. An analysis of Krause’s list by The Dallas Morning News found that “of the first 100 titles listed, 97 were written by women, people of color or LGBTQ authors.”
You can call a lot of things “porn” and “criminal” if you just squint enough. It’s never only going to be the content you personally hate and deem “immoral”. Never.
@fiction-is-not-reality2, @olderthannetfic, @absolutes-are-dangerous, @allshipsareok, @antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx
Sigh.
Some books on that list:
- What is the Black Lives Matter movement?
- Jane against the world: Roe v. Wade and the fight for reproductive rights
- An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States for young people
- Wait, what?: a comic book guide to relationships, bodies, and growing up
- Critical perspectives on gender identity
- Are you LGBTQ?
- Far from the tree: parents, children, and the search for identity
- They called themselves the K.K.K.: the birth of an American terrorist group
- Sexual health information for teens : health tips about sexual development, reproduction, contraception, and sexually transmitted infections
- And still I rise: black America since MLK: an illustrated chronology
- Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension
The list includes one book from 1969, one from 1976, six from the 80s, just under 75 from the 90s. It’s mostly about recent books: 19 books from 2021, and over 80 from 2020.
And the list makes it damn clear it’s not about “removing books telling kids how to be queer.” It’s about anything that challenges white male supremacy.
The headline on the news article is waffling, because this isn’t about removing queer books, or even books about sex. It’s also about removing every trace of anti-racism from the Texas public education system
…while claiming the books on the list could be criminally indecent.
