Censors are afraid of how people really think, feel

Fights about free speech can feel rhetorical until they are not.

Here's what censorship looks like in practice: A student newspaper and journalism program in Nebraska shuttered for writing about pride month. The state of Oklahoma seeking to revoke the teaching certificate of an English teacher who shared a QR code that directed students to the Brooklyn Public Library's online collection of banned books. A newly elected district attorney in Tennessee musing = about jailing teachers and librarians.

In Florida today it may even be illegal for teachers to even talk about who they love or marry thanks to the state's "Don't Say Gay" law. Of course, it goes far beyond sex: The sunshine state's Republican commissioner of education rejected 28 different math textbooks this year for including verboten content.

Acts of censorship are often tacit admissions of weakness masquerading as strength.

This weakness is on full display with the imposition of so-called educational gag orders, laws which restrict the discussions of race, gender, sexuality and American history in K-12 and higher education.

A political project convinced of the superiority of its ideas doesn't need the power of the state to shield people from competing ideas.

Censorship is the desperate rear-guard action of a movement that has already lost the fight for hearts and minds.

This year alone, 137 gag order bills like these have been introduced in 36 state legislatures. That's a sharp increase from 2021 when 54 bills were introduced in 22 states, according to a report released last month by PEN America, a free speech organization. Only seven of those bills became law in 2022, but they are some of the strictest to date, and the sheer number of bills introduced reflects a growing enthusiasm on the right for censorship as a political weapon and instrument of social control.

These new measures are far more punitive than past efforts, with heavy fines or loss of state funding for institutions that dare to offer courses covering the forbidden content. Teachers can be fired and even face criminal charges. Lawsuits have already started to trickle through the courts asking for broad interpretations of the new statutes. For the first time, the PEN report noted, some bills have also targeted private schools and universities in addition to public schools.

It wasn't all that long ago that Republican lawmakers around the country were introducing laws designed to protect free speech on college campuses. Now, they're using the coercive power of the state to restrict what people can talk about, learn about or discuss in public, and exposing them to lawsuits for doing so. That's a clear threat to the ideals of a pluralistic political culture, in which challenging ideas are welcomed and discussed.

How and what to teach American students has been contested ground since the earliest days of public education. The content of that instruction is something about which Americans of good will can respectfully disagree.

The Supreme Court has also recognized limits on the censorship of school libraries, if not curriculums.

"Local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion,"' a plurality of justices wrote in a 1982 decision.

Despite the moral panic over teaching about gender and race, American parents say they are overwhelmingly satisfied with the instruction their children receive. A poll from National Public Radio and Ipsos earlier this year found that just 18 percent of parents said their child's school "taught about gender and sexuality in a way that clashed with their family's values," while 19 percent said the same about race and racism. Only 14 percent felt that way about American history.tions in races from Texas to New Jersey.

For a vocal minority to ban discussion of certain facts or topics — because they make some people uncomfortable or simply to score political points — is deeply undemocratic, particularly in a nation founded on a commitment to free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Free expression isn't just a feature of democracy; it is a necessary prerequisite.