Who Chooses What We Can Read or Say?
I wrote this piece in response to a letter to the editor that ranted against book banning. The author blamed Republicans. I told the rest of the story.
Below is a letter to the editor I wrote that didn’t get published. Perhaps because I was slow at responding, and I missed the news cycle.
Our county council proposed to ban fireworks this month, and multiple letter writers responded, filling the small editorial page of our semi-weekly SouthWhidbey Record/Whidbey News-Times.
Or perhaps I have finally been blacklisted as a conservative writer. My last letter written wasn’t published either. That one may have been too late as well.
I take time writing. I don’t just shoot off a piece without much thought and editing. It is quite obvious that many letter writers do just that. Some published pieces don’t make sense and wouldn’t pass a 1980s high school English class. Frequent letter writer Nancy Mayer is an example.
Here’s the letter:
In Nancy Mayer’s March 29, 2023, rant on book banning, she fails to distinguish between banning books and protecting the innocence of children. Yes, libraries, including school libraries, are exempt from obscenity laws. However, being legal doesn't make exposing children to such material moral.
Parents want to remove pornographic books such as It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, Gender, and Sexual Health. A few years ago, parents attempted to read this picture book at a state legislature hearing but were stopped because it violated the obscenity law that governs hearings. Yet, this book is offered to fifth and sixth graders. Look it up on Amazon.
Most people would agree that Penthouse, Playboy, and The Joy of Sex do not belong in a third-grade classroom. Nor should the recruitment tracts of the Aryan Nations, the KKK, or the Nation of Islam appear on school bookshelves. As a society, we agree we should not provide particular materials to children.
Nancy claims to champion free speech. Yet for decades, diversity of thought, so vital for a robust constitutional republic, has been canceled by state religionists.
Consider these suggestions, and for the sake of argument, imagine infinite library space.
In the section on belief systems, would you allow the Bible, Talmud, Quran, and Bhagavad Gita to sit next to the How to Be an Antiracist, BLM literature, and Social Emotional Learning curricula? How about pairing Antiracist Baby with The Tuttle Toddlers: The ABCs of Liberty? Or I Am Jazz with I Don’t Have to Choose?
In history, would you allow the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn’s US history to be balanced with the Tuttle Twins books, the Rush Revere series, or Faith of Our Founding Fathers?
In science, would you allow Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe to sit next to The Blind Watchmaker?
In health, would you allow Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student to be shelved next to the writings of the disciples of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, or Margaret Sanger? Or Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader’s Eye-Opening Journey Across the Life Line to reside next to the comprehensive sex ed FLASH curriculum?
Most likely, NO!
Who, then, is guilty of dictating “what we can read or say”?
Who Chooses What We Can Read or Say?
Well done! Thanks for all of your insightful writing.