People who want to ban books still don't seem to understand what book bans are.
Sometimes the arguments that school board members make leave you scratching your head.
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One Wilson County, TN, school board member said, "we're not banning books; we're simply saying that we don't think that public school library is the place for it."
They still don't get it. A parent responded, "you are banning books if you vote to remove this. And telling yourselves you're not — you're lying to yourselves."
"Parents make the best decisions for their children...
— EveryLibrary (@EveryLibrary) January 23, 2023
Anybody can call their librarian and say, 'my child cannot check out that book.'
If you don't want your kids to have it, PARENT." https://t.co/tczDkqkCaV
Sign the petition to fight book bans!
One attendee got angry when the school librarian said she was a "book banner" and said that that term was "highly inaccurate." Even though that was exactly was she was trying to do.
Or rather, she said, "We are asking for the books that have been brought to the attention of the school personnel to be removed from the recommended reading lists in the schools and not being offered to children."
I got a shout out at the last board meeting by someone who didn’t like my use of the term #bookbanning and #bookbanners. She wanted to be clear that the terms were “highly inaccurate” because…
— Mr. Janu 📚 🏳️🌈 (@MrJanuARC) January 22, 2023
1/12 pic.twitter.com/BsVbB2Iena
We're not sure what they think book bans are.
But we do know that banning books in classrooms is a slippery slope that leads to books being banned from the open market and made illegal to own. Does this sound dystopian and improbable to you? It happened in Virginia, where owning, selling, transporting, and distributing a copy of Gender Queer, a Memoir by Maia Kobabe, is a criminal offense that can land you in court.