I once taught down the hall from a woman who allowed her religious beliefs to dictate how she covered her American Government classes. She had entered her teaching career when Jesus told her to get into teaching so He could be brought back to the public schools, and, not having much success as she was often over the top and her students took advantage of her weakness to favor the more religious and conservative student whether it was genuine or just cosplay, apparently Jesus told her to run for the state legislature to accomplish this state-wide.

During her time in office, as it happened this way in every place in America where the book was condemned, two local parents allegedly picked up their children whom they had left at the public library unattended, and on the way home asked what books they had gotten. One of the children began to read from a book, King and King, the story of a prince whose mother while attempting to marry him off to a princess found he was actually in love with another prince and had no problem with it. After almost hitting a tree and potentially killing their own children in their horror, the parents called this representative who then demanded that as the public library was tax funded, this book be removed from all libraries, or those offending libraries which refused to do this would be denied funding from the state.

Attracting some very disturbingly conservative people, the legislator went to a Metro Library Commission meeting demanding any book with a “Homosexual Theme” or which might have spoken of Homosexuality as anything other than an abomination be removed from the system.

A group of people including some from the ACLU, local Gay organizations, library workers, and concerned citizens, myself included, went to the same meeting to argue that parents should not demand something they object to be removed away from everyone, nor should they control what other parents’ children should be able to read.

Over a series of subsequent meetings, the foolishness of her demand became more and more apparent. She modified it after a while from removing the books totally from libraries to placing them in a restricted area for books that were controversial in nature without actually describing who would do this, or on what the judgment that there was any real controversy would be based. The library commission, for its part, knowing that as libraries are funded by all tax payers, was reluctant to choose and place books apart solely on the opinions and desires of any one group. Even the Bible had its unsavory parts, and fairy tales were rife with negative references to step-mothers that would certainly offend those families that had one. It was conceivable that quite a few books with anything anyone might find objectionable would be put in a totally separate place apart. There just wasn‘t enough space in any library to accommodate all the books that might need to be moved. Wherever the legislator went with her message, people from the other side of the argument were there too.

The final compromise of the Library Commission to the legislator‘s demand was far away from a total seclusion of these books in a separate room. They would be placed on an easily findable shelf, separated from other books. Instead of the desired effect of making them hard to find, these controversial books were made more easily found because they were on a separate shelf in the children‘s section like the enticing bawdy magazines are separated from sport and news magazines in a newspaper store.

Her greatest threat of withholding public funds from non-cooperating libraries was shot down in the state legislature, and the matter died.

The story of the parents, the surprise reading, and the possible car accident that had been represented as a local problem, but it was the same story told in many states with Christian conservative heavy legislatures with certain details like references to local landmarks, who spoke and who read, the mother or father, the daughter or son, and what the final object of possible impact was going to be with choices like tree or levee.

It was a generic enough story to be modified as needed.

That was also back when Gay was just about the worst thing but has since been reduced in degree as openly Gay service members did not destroy the military, same-sex marriages did not destroy marriage, nor has Gay kids not being beaten up at school in Jesus’s name destroyed public education and religion.

After a fourth-grade teacher in Texas read “Call Me Max” to her class, a book about a transgender boy going to school and making friends, because it was on a list of books that promoted diversity, her school deemed it inappropriate and offered counseling to students who were in the class.

 Some parents are calling for the teacher to be fired.

The district agreed that the book was inappropriate because it discussed a transgender character. However, did it discuss or simply tell a story about a Transgender boy?

Basically, a kid wants people to call him Max as he is not the girl it is assumed he is, and when he goes to a new school, instead of being the outcast Max thought he would be, he made friends because kids are kids.

Classic plot. Exposition, plot development, climax, and denoument. No discussion.

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If I read The Three Little Pigs, is that a discussion or a simple reading with no analysis?

The school district’s chief learning officer sent an email to parents also calling the book “not appropriate to be read aloud to an entire elementary-age class.”

She also explained,

“As soon as the occurrence came to the attention of the principal, he immediately contacted the district office. Counselors were made available to support students, and the school administration worked with families to provide an explanation and reassurances.”

There are, however, reasonable parents who are responding by asking about the message being sent that others need counseling to cope with their transgender peers and classmates?

We Gays did not leave our closets to make them available for the next group the bigots want to put in them.

Those kids who read about witches eating children, the preponderance of evil step-mothers which speaks ill of blended families in a country where more than half the marriages end in divorce, and that only the cute little girls will find their prince, the rest get the fat guy in the barn, need to be sheltered from learning easily at an early age about all the types of people they will encounter for the rest of their lives and need to just live and let live.

Superintendent Tom Leonard went to a classic but faulty rationale by first saying that the book isn’t a part of an approved curriculum, so it shouldn’t have been read, while ignoring that something as simple as the kids liking a Dr. Seuss book that is contained in the curriculum, a teacher may want to capture their enthusiasm for reading by reading them another Seuss book she has in her book bag but is not in the curriculum.

Been there and actually have the letter. After having read something from the textbook that the students liked and after their asking if I had anything else like it, I went to a book I had on a shelf, found what fit what they wanted, and read it. I was called to the office and given a written reprimand for reading something to the kids that was not actively included in the curriculum. Apparently, curriculum-adjacent doesn’t count.

The superintendent then went with the “parents should have been given a chance to opt their children out of hearing the book” rationale, which he said is required by state law.

Again, been there, because in that same position when having read a Walt Whitman Calamus poem to an American Literature class without changing the personal pronouns so they could hear the poem as intended along with other examples beyond the few examples of his work in the textbook that did not truly represent him, I was advised anytime I was going to read something controversial, I shout allow parent the opt-out choice, and I had to ask if this parental notification had to be issued before anything was read in class because everything has the potential to offend someone’s morals or religion putting me and all teacher who might read something to their class in a position to have to decide what is moral and what is universally acceptable to all religions.

The book’s author, a former elementary school librarian who is a Trans man, agreed there were times of trauma, like school shootings, sudden student deaths maybe, when counselling might be necessary, but a book about a transgender kid doesn’t fit in with that.

Meanwhile any transgender person with a relationship to that school whether being a kid in it, a relative of a kid in it, a neighbor of a kid in it, the teacher who has the kid in their class in that school is being told that unlike all the other kids, your very existence is traumatic to the degree that it is equal to someone coming in and shooting up your school and killing some of your friends.

If a story about a Transgender kid is deemed traumatic the Trans kids and their peers and classmates are being told they are a source of trauma, yet, when they are traumatized by bullying and harassment, well, that has to be let slide. Walk it off.

The bathroom scare did not work.

The purpose for a ban on Transgender servicemembers was shown to be groundless, and now along with girls playing sports with other girls, the bigots are going to be going after books.

Keep the children ignorant. It is easier that way.