Books are being banned by people who aren't even parents!

Every parent wants to protect their child, and when it comes to what students are learning in schools the parents should be the ones to decide, right?  And all of this recent news about book bans is just worried parents who want the best for their children. Isn’t it?

Maybe not... You might be surprised to learn that quite often, the people behind the book bans sweeping the nation have not read the books they want banned. Or even have children in the schools they are complaining about. 

Or have any children at all.

As in: they are not parents. Therefore, by definition, they are not ‘concerned parents.’

Shocked? The truth is most of the book bans we see attacking literary classics and children's books are not, in fact, concerned parents, but rather naked power grabs by political movements that want to silence and censor ideas they do not agree with, while sowing distrust in our communities. And there are plenty of examples of this happening around the country.    

Take, for example, Bruce Friedman of Clay County, Florida. Friedman has a list of 3,600 books he thinks need to be banned from schools - and he’s actually succeeded in having more than a hundred of those ripped from library shelves through his overwhelming number of challenges. But guess what? Friedman does not have children in Clay County. And he freely admits he has not read most of the books he is challenging for removal.

Clay County is banning books based on the outcry of a single person who has never read the books they are challenging and has no children in the school district.

What about the case of Williamson County’s Moms For Liberty chapter that got Sea Horses: The Shyest Fish in the Sea banned for having images of seahorses with their tails intertwined? It turns out the mother who filed that particular complaint DOES NOT have children in public school.

Her kids go to private school. Far away from dangerous books about sea horses.

Still, she thought she could have some input on how the public schools are run, despite not have students in her family that even attended them. That would be like someone in the office complex next door deciding what coffee your office was allowed to have because they didn’t like a flavor.

In Pinellas County, a "mother" recently read from the book Push at a school board meeting to have it removed from libraries and curriculums. It turns out that this so-called "mother" is a member of Moms For Liberty named Angela Dubach. She may be a "mom for liberty", but she does not have children. She IS NOT a mom. 

Yet she is part of an action group that claims to be mothers concerned about their children, and her voice and opinions about what books other parents’ children are able to read is being considered above the voices of actual mothers in the community. 

Dale Galiano in St. Lucie is a retiree with no children actively in the school district she lives in. But she was behind the banning of Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes.  The banning was based on her individual objections, not the objections of the community. Just hers. She, who has no children in the schools, led to the banning of the book.

Whose children is she protecting?

These are not "concerned parents." They are political operatives.

These book banners are political operatives who are out of step with public opinion. FAR out of step, in fact.

70% of parents with children actually in schools disagree with book bans. Less than 1% of parents opt their students out of required reading or literary assignments in public schools when given the option to do so. Most ACTUAL parents do not want books taken away from their children. Most ACTUAL parents do not want educational opportunities being taken away from students.

And ultimately, that is what is happening. With every book ban, a student, a group of students, an entire school district loses educational value and opportunity. 

And for what? “Concerned parents”? No. For billionaires who stand to make even more money by shifting public dollars to private schools, and their multimillion-dollar AstroTurf organizations and political groups forcing their ideology on the rest of the country.

They want legislation that would dictate what students can and cannot read. That’s not parent’s rights. That is the exact opposite. That is the government TELLING you what your child is allowed to have access to in their libraries, not YOU deciding what they can read. This is not liberty. It is tyranny of the minority. It is shadowy organizations controlling political operatives to take freedoms and opportunities away from you and your family.

These are not concerned parents. They never were.