Ready to Fight LGBTQ+ Book Bans? Start Here

June is Rainbow Book Month, a nationwide celebration of the authors and written works that reflect the lives and experiences of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a great time to explore LGBTQ+ books and resources at your local library. Originally established in the 1990s as National Lesbian and Gay Book Month by The Publishing Triangle, Rainbow Book Month is an initiative of the American Library Association, and this year, it’s more essential than ever.

With the recent increase in book bans—many of which target LGBTQ+ authors, characters, and themes—it’s important to lift up LGBTQ+ voices and celebrate the many stories that reflect their experiences. These bans threaten to silence marginalized voices, harm young people who are just beginning to explore their identities, and reduce the diversity of representation in our stories to the experiences of only an elite few.

Silencing an entire group of people makes the world a more dangerous place for everyone and robs us of our intellectual freedom. This Rainbow Book Month should be not just a celebration but also a call to action, encouraging communities of all kinds to fight back against the blatant censorship of LGBTQ+ stories and the attacks on our freedom to read. To help in this fight, there’s a new empowering resource: Book Bans: A Guide for Community Response & Action.

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A Guide to Fighting Book Bans

Book Bans: A Guide for Community Response & Action is a collaboration between the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD and EveryLibrary. It was created in response to the rising number of bans against LGBTQ+ titles on race and racism. According to GLAAD, the guide is designed to help people “organize, create authentic messages, and work with media to ensure diverse local voices are heard against book bans and in support of LGBTQ people and all people of color.”

While most people oppose censorship, not everyone knows how to help stop it. This guide was created specifically for communities to use to fight back against the recent onslaught of unfair book challenges and bans. The guide is free, accessible, and designed for everyone to use, not just professionals or seasoned activists.

Book Bans is filled with practical information that gives people the tools they need to counter those who try to limit our right to read and silence vulnerable communities. The guide details the facts about the current surge in book bans, including the many ways in which intellectual freedom and the LGBTQ+ community have come under attack.

It also includes an FAQ section that clarifies key issues, such as the difference between book bans and book challenges, which books are most frequently challenged, where most challenges are coming from, and what is at stake in book bans. There are links to report censorship attempts, as well as encouraging stories of libraries that have successfully fought back against book banners.

When fighting against censorship, it’s necessary to stay informed about the tactics book banners use and which forces are actually behind most book challenges. This guide has all that information, but most importantly, it includes a list of practical steps communities can take to act and push back against local book challenges.

Sign the petition to fight book bans!

How Communities Can Organize Against Censorship

Organizing a grassroots campaign to fight local book challenges can seem daunting, but Book Bans offers a step-by-step guide to forming a group to take on censorship. The first step is to research and gather facts. It’s important to know what local policies are in place for making and reviewing book challenges, and Book Bans helps people understand how to navigate and respond strategically to those policies.

Book Bans provides a link to ALA’s guidance on book challenges, as well as a list of questions to ask before launching an anti-censorship campaign. Once the proper research is done, the next step is to recruit volunteers to create a task force. The guide walks you through selecting group leaders, choosing a group name, drafting your group’s message, creating petitions and social media accounts, and other vital steps for creating a well-organized campaign.

Spreading the Message

Once a group is organized, the priority shifts to ensuring people hear its message. Attend any local board meetings that discuss book challenges or related issues. There may be more than one attempt at banning books, and it’s vital for anti-censorship activists to show up each time.

Providing public comments at these meetings is the best way to fight against these bans. Whether you are part of an organized campaign or not, if you have the chance to speak out publicly at a board meeting about a local book challenge, you should do so. Having a variety of voices from across the local community, all speaking up in unison against censorship, can go a long way toward convincing board members to halt any attempts at banning books.

Another way to spread the message of anti-censorship is to write opinion pieces or letters to the editor of your local newspaper. Social media is also a good way to engage in advocacy by boosting supportive posts and sharing links to petitions and relevant news coverage.

Advocacy is most effective when it’s at the local level, so while it can be beneficial to get big names involved in a campaign, nothing carries more weight than people from your own community speaking up. It’s also essential to stay persistent, even in the face of failure, and to keep your message rooted in shared values, such as supporting the freedom to read.

When fighting book bans, every little bit helps. You can show your support for intellectual freedom and marginalized voices by downloading Book Bans and sharing it with others online or in person. You can also attend your local board meetings to speak up against censorship and sign EveryLibrary’s petition against book bans. Start fighting book bans today!

Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries. 

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This work by EveryLibrary is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0