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Book Bans, Parental Rights, and the Heckler's Veto [1]

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Date: 2023-05-25  

Unsurprisingly, the large majority of book challenges in this country were filed by eleven people.

Eleven people have tried in an organized fashion to remove reference to LGBTQ people and people of color from American schools and libraries (42% of the challenges were for books that referenced LGBTQ people and 28% were for books that referenced race). They demand that no child be allowed to be exposed to LGBTQ content or the stories that might somehow expose them to the truth about racism or other perspectives on America other than the straight, white conservative Christian one. That is not parental rights, that is the heckler's veto.

I am sure you know, but the heckler's veto is when people are forced to stop talking about a subject because the loudest or most violent people don't want them to. These eleven people have participated in an organized campaign, apparently backed by right wing politicians and media, to heckle away all references to LGBTQ and people of color and their history in this country. They claim it is their right as parents to do "protect" their children. Nonsense.

I have parental rights as well, and I want my children to be able to discover this material. I want my children to be free to intellectually explore, to find things that I would not think to show them, to stretch their minds as they grow into their own people. My parent right to raise my children in that manner should not get trampled on by book banners.

We know this is not really about parent rights. If it was, a simple process to say "please don't let me children check out these books" -- which every school already has -- would suffice. If it was, then we would not get stories like the teacher who is under investigation for showing a Pixar move to ten-year olds where a same sex cartoon crush is mentioned once, even though permission slips for PG movies were sent home and signed by the parent demanding the investigation.

No, these people do not care about parental rights. They care about trying to make the stories of people of color and LGBTQ disappear because they seem to be convinced that their kids hate them because they are being brainwashed in school. This is not true. Their kids hate them, to the extent that they do, because their kids see them doing hateful things like being bigoted towards people of color and LGBTQ people. Human beings are a naturally cooperative, kind species. Especially kids. We have to be taught to hate the other. Unfortunately for the older generation, there are too many ways kids today can encounter non-distorted pictures of non-white, or LGBTQ kids -- including in their daily lives. They know that racism is real, they know that their LGBTQ peers are just other kids, whatever mom or grandad might say. All the book burning in the world isn't going to change that.

It is not and never has been the job of a parent to teach a child what to think. It the parent's job to teach a child how to think. These people want to force everyone's child to be taught what to think about LGBTQ people, people of color, and falsities about American history. It is an attack on the ability of parents to raise their children as they see fit. It is flatly immoral to bury the truth because it is sometimes uncomfortable. And it is unconscionably damaging to children, whose education is stunted and whose ability to learn for themselves is retarded. It is long past time we stopped treating these people as if they were acting in good faith and asserted our rights as parents and citizens to live in an open, free, and honest country.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/25/2171087/-Book-Bans-Parental-Rights-and-the-Heckler-s-Veto

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