GOP's Book BanningThreatens Democracy
Loudoun’s culture warriors’ latest stunt is an effort to instruct the School Board – and by extension, Loudoun’s highly regarded, professional educators – which books are OK to use in classrooms and libraries.
Having recently lost a couple of high-profile legal battles – in which they sought to have school board members tarred and feathered or, perhaps, boiled in oil – the forces assaulting our schools, led in this instance by the Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club, seek to indoctrinate our children with books they approve by playing the tired “We The Parents” routine.
Well, you know what: WE ARE PARENTS, TOO… and maybe we disagree. That’s what elections are for.
By the way, you know what books they do approve?
Not surprising: they would ban books that reflect a society where people are permitted to love who they want. So too, there would be no mentioning anything about LGBTQ+.
But here’s an odd twist: the Christian right, book-banning advocates recommend reading Game of Thrones and its sequel, A Clash of Kings. You know, the story built around an incestuous pair of power-hungry siblings, replete with rampant acts of cruelty to children, torture, and rape; fine for children of all ages!
Another choice on the list they submitted to the School Board is Rigged by Mollie Hemingway, a shamelessly biased and at times delusional account of how all the power centers of Washington colluded to steal the election from poor, powerless Donald. Notably, none of the respected conservative media outlets – The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The American Conservative, to name a few – even bothered to review the book.
So, the crowd who complain so bitterly about indoctrination, or “grooming” as they call it, and the need for family values, would force feed our children fact-free ravings of Mollie Hemingway and the imagery of women raped and children tortured.
This is the same hypocrisy that enables Republicans to stand by Herschel Walker; it’s why they can look straight into the camera and say they care about unborn children but do nothing for them after they are born, when those children are hungry or being gunned down at schools; it’s why they can argue that every school shooting is all about mental illness – not easy access to guns – but vote against funding mental health treatment in public schools; it’s why they want to ban books and prevent us from discussing the less than stellar aspects of our nation’s past.
When it comes to book banning it’s been demonstrated throughout the troubled eras of the mid-20th century, that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” – censorship is a dangerous, dark path to traverse.
Censorship, book banning, and imposing your morality on others is a giant step towards faith-based authoritarianism. That’s the way things operate today in Iran, whose Morality Police famously ban books and impose strict rules of conduct and censorship. That’s why the Founders opted for the separation of church and state.
And now we are hearing echoes of those Iranian-like extremists’ voices here in America calling for an end to that separation, demanding prayer in schools, imposing censorship, and demonizing Black Americans as a criminal class, and no one in the conservative camp will speak out.
They seek to block out the sunlight and plunge us all into their darkness.
Join us as we fight to preserve our democracy.
