Gender Queer and This Book is Gay are being held up as “justification” for a regressive library policy that allows for a snippet of sexual content to qualify a book for removal, and jeopardizes dozens of books of literary merit including Melissa, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Bluest Eye, Looking for Alaska, The 57 Bus, unless the book is considered a “classic” and then is oddly protected.

This raises the question of whether those who favor book removals have read many classics:

A Tale of Two Cities centers around a rape and murder.

The Great Gatsby is an elaborate tale of adultery.

The Odyssey depicts its title character held in sexual slavery twice.

Brave New World contains two orgies.

The Crucible contains a scene between an adulterous husband and a 16-year-old servant girl with whom he had an affair, in which she says, “You sweated like a stallion when I come near.”

Fun fact: all of the above have been part of our CURRICULUM: they were assigned to kids, not just lying on a shelf in the library for them to read if they chose.

Where is the dividing line between “classic” and “modern” and therefore ripe for removal? Why is this okay and our newer books are not?

This week we take a look at false claims of “gender ideology” in the classroom. Turns out it’s an invented term with a long history of intentional scapegoating. These days it shows up as “justification” for American legislation written under the false premise of “protection from sexualization.” Take for example Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Bill, our own (not very successful) Canadian gadfly protestor, and proposed federal legislation.

That’s quite a lot of traction for a term that means nothing.

The term that does mean something is gender identity, and it has nothing to do with alleged sexualizing of children.

The Moms for Liberty agenda is not about ALL kids and it’s certainly not about strengthening our community schools. It’s about power, naked, raw power, and money. It’s about electing their candidates, eradicating the Department of Education, humiliating teachers, and opening the door to the end of public education as we know it.

Who knows best what local schools in Central Bucks and Pennridge need? Warrior Moms in Sarasota FL? Charter school magnates/idealogues in Hillsdale MI? Lawyer/activists in Harrisburg PA? Or you, your neighbors and friends, and the teachers in your child’s own school?

What those from Sarasota, Hillsdale, and Harrisburg have in common is a desire to spread their agendas nationwide, without consideration for what will help our kids, whom they don’t know. They disregard best practices and established guidelines for good policy and inclusive education to push a partisan take on identity and history for their own purposes.

Educators should in be charge of educational decisions, not politically motivated national groups that want to take over all education.

What matters is that every child finds in school a place of belonging, where they can be proud of their unique gifts, where they can find the education they need to realize their highest, noblest potential. All children must be appreciated, validated, accepted, and treated fairly in order to achieve their best. Marginalized children in particular need schools that actively welcome and protect them, as feeling unsafe is a genuine barrier to a child’s education.

That requires policy and curriculum reform to foster dignity and belonging and children’s ability to thrive, not just survive, in school.

Yet, for the past 18 months, in a national climate attacking the rights and humanity of LGBTQ people, we have seen no such district-wide effort to improve our most vulnerable children’s experience at their schools. We hear decision-makers say “we support all kids,” but we haven’t seen action that would follow through.

Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today, an exchange that should take place inside the classroom as well as in the public realm generally.

Our ears perked up to hear our school board speak last month about revising our social studies curriculum with an eye to increasing Civics education. 

Great idea! 

If there is one thing we think we can all agree on, it is the importance of preparing our kids to be informed and engaged participants in our 21st-century democracy.

We read an article recently that named one of the people behind the 60+ book challenges in CB.

We experienced a sense of dread. 

Journalists must do their work. Perhaps that person asked to be named, was proud to be named. But we fear what may happen next. 

Our community, like our nation, has not distinguished itself in recent months for the respectful tone of its debates. We fear that the named person may experience threats and epithets that will help nothing and instead do great harm. It will place all the focus on the individual. It’s not a one-sided phenomenon. But we question its benefit. We know it harms individuals. Does it help anyone’s cause? We doubt it.

Our focus needs to be on books: books on shelves for kids to read, and liberty: freedom to explore diverse ideas, perspectives, and topics.

We are delighted that the candidates that are invested in the freedom to read and the freedom to learn, and committed to best-practices, teacher-trusted education won, AND that they had bi-partisan support. Now their focus will turn to November, and ours remains where it always was: on policy.

Fortunately, yesterday's primary results, including significant bi-partisan support for good governance and great education, should encourage everyone fighting for the things our kids need.

We were distressed, angered, and unsurprised to learn Friday that two books—Gender Queer and This Book is Gay—have been removed, silently and without announcement, from Central Bucks libraries (Gender Queer was at one HS and This Book is Gay was at one MS. Beyond Magenta, Lawn Boy, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl remain.)

There are times when “I told you so” are the four saddest words to speak. We wish this day had never come. We worked very hard to prevent the library policy that enables the district to ban these and potentially many other books, but in the teeth of ferocious meddling by national groups, we failed. Friday was a loss for Central Bucks students and for our reputation as a bastion of learning.

Most of us believe that kids of all races, backgrounds, and genders should have the freedom to learn, be themselves, and pursue their dreams. To get there—to expand and include everyone—requires change and progress in Central Bucks.

Throughout history, people who feel threatened by ideas seek to crush the ideas rather than understand or rebut them.

Giving so few parents so much power to take educational options away from other parents and children runs counter to the spirit of democracy and free inquiry, and enshrines a form of parental tyranny of the hypersensitive, the inexplicably aggrieved and the maliciously oppressive.

Showing an image or reading a passage fails to define a work of art as pornography. What matters is the intent of the image/work of art taken as a whole.

Does Gender Queer fall under the P banner? It does not. The images it includes are specifically anti-erotic. The author found no pleasure in the acts depicted and the images do not seek to arouse the reader. 

Do any of the challenged books fall under the P banner? They do not. Our professional staff chose them to illuminate, to inform, to represent a valid viewpoint, never, ever, ever, to arouse.

What we focus on become our reality, which is why it is so important for our brains to focus on real, meaningful, and positive goals.

If we rid our libraries of such books, we say to our students: you’re on your own. Don’t expect to find help here. Reading won’t illuminate your path, bring you comfort, dignify your suffering. Nope. You can read happy books about doves and unicorns and no one will ask you about what happened to you or help you process it. You are alone, possibly freakish in your isolation, and you will never see your experience reflected in what you read.

We recently had the misfortune to confront this: Moms For Liberty Bucks County Leaders Think Public Schools Are Trying To Bring Pedophilia Into the Classroom.

We condemn in the strongest terms this foul attempt to smear our teachers. We condemn the lie. We condemn the ill intent. We condemn the harm done to our schools, our teachers, and especially to our children, when an irresponsible group cries wolf to advance their political agenda.

News for our CB leadership: your own PR firm is telling you that they cannot paper over your bad policies. Blaming your own constituents for the inevitable consequences of your bad decisions will deceive no one.

D&P, their clients, 74+ school board directors, 15+ national & local civil rights, education rights, literacy, and academic groups, and the public at large know your true colors.

"When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don't speak out ain't nobody going to speak out for you."

Fannie Lou Hamer

Residents of Central Bucks, if you believed that the conflict over freedom in our schools didn’t matter much or would resolve itself, think again. As of today, more than 60 books in our libraries have been challenged, probably to be removed. Policy 109 gives such power to our admin and gives so little defense of any book, literally despite recognized literary merit, that they can ban anything they dislike.