I really cannot imagine what nefarious activities Republicans believe happen at libraries. I understand the rhetoric, and readers here at Daily Kos will immediately recognize it as anti-queer and anti-trans, too, with accusations of books by and about LGBTQ+ people being “pornographic,” “obscene,” or “inappropriate.” The conspiracy theory vision is that librarians (and public school teachers) are just waiting to “indoctrinate” kids into being queer—or using litter boxes like cats, apparently.
But there’s something about the ongoing effort to challenge, ban, and even burn books that continues to feel right out of a dystopian movie. Conservatives are so worried about certain age-appropriate, inclusive books being available for kids and teenagers (or even available at all, including for adults) that they’re willing to flood school board meetings with out-of-context passages and summaries and try to turn the tide of public opinion against books by and about a marginalized community. They’re books! Adults should, frankly, be happy any young people want to sit down and read a book given they’re still surviving a global pandemic and worrying about gun violence every time they walk into school.
But I digress. Conservatives are attacking books, and libraries are suffering because of it. A recent example of a hard-fought victory on behalf of book access comes to us out of South Carolina, where the Greenville County Council recently voted 3-9 to keep LGBTQ+ books available to kids in the library, as reported by The State. Republican City Councilor Joe Dill introduced a resolution to get rid of all the LGBTQ+ books from the children’s sections of all 12 libraries in the system, and he had a scary amount of support.
Yeah, this is getting really, really bad.
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