Parents, book censorship foes raise alarms

Orange County Public Schools removed one book from school libraries this fall because of a parent’s complaint about sexually explicit content and three others face reviews, including a memoir by a gay Black author already ousted from school libraries in Florida and several other states.

Books in seven other Florida school districts faced challenges in recent months and a bill advancing in the Legislature would allow more public scrutiny of what books are kept in school libraries.

In Indian River County, a chapter of Moms for Liberty — a conservative group challenging books across the country — said on its Facebook page it targeted more than 150 books for removal, mostly for explicit sexual content. Among the list is

“Beloved” by Toni Morrison, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

In Flagler County, a school board member filed a criminal complaint about the memoir written by George Johnson, who is gay and Black, though the county sheriff determined the book’s placement in a school library did not constitute a crime.

“This really is a national crisis in people trying to limit what America’s students are allowed to learn,” said Nora Pelizzari, the spokesperson for National Coalition Against Censorship. “It’s an additional battlefield in the sort of political culture war playing out around the country.”

The effort to remove books seems targeted to volumes with LGBTQ or Black characters, she and others argue, and may run afoul of a 40-year-old U.S. Supreme Court case that said school boards could not get rid of library books that conveyed ideas they did not like.

“They’re violating our kids’ First Amendment rights to be able to go out and read these books,” said Jen Cousins, a mother of four who lives in Waterford Lakes in east Orange and recently co-founded the Florida Freedom to Read Project to help fight censorship in schools.

Cousins and others argue a small number of book critics — in Orange, one mother is responsible for three of four book challenges — shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what other people’s children can take out from school libraries, nor should books be attacked based on passages about sex pulled out of context.

“It is our job as parents to make sure these books do not disappear,” said Stephana Ferrell, the group’s other co-founder, speaking during an online press conference last week as part of a new “Book Ban Busters” campaign.

The national campaign links “suburban moms” from across the country worried about school book challenges.

“The library is a safe haven,” said Ferrell, a Winter Garden mother of two, where children should be able to find books with characters like themselves — and learn about those with different experiences.

From Utah to Texas to Pennsylvania, the book challenges have come from conservative parents who demanded local school boards remove books from libraries and from Republican leaders seeking new laws to restrict what goes on the shelves.

The recently challenged library books include “Gender Queer,” written by an author who identifies as nonbinary, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” about growing up Black and gay, and The New York Times best-sellers “The Hate U Give” and “The Kite Runner.”

Those who want certain volumes removed say they are protecting children from material they are too young to understand, in the same way they would keep them from R-rated movies and expect schools to as well.

“Graphic sexual content is never OK for school children,” read a post on the Indian River Moms for Liberty Facebook page.

“My concern is some of these materials are not age-appropriate,” said Sen. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, as a Senate panel debated its bill (SB 1300) in late January and then advanced it along a party-line vote.

Diaz did not mention particular books that concerned him.

Several Democrats criticized the legislation, which has now been passed by the Florida House. “I’m very concerned this is the slippery slope of censorship,” said Sen. Lori Berman, D-Delray Beach.

In Orange, school leaders pulled “Gender Queer” from the three high school libraries in late October because administrators decided the graphic novel included too-explicit illustrations of sex acts.

Those graphic drawings and not the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation made it inappropriate for students, they said. To make that point, Superintendent Barbara Jenkins and Teresa Jacobs, the school board’s chair, sent a letter to state lawmakers last week saying they worried about the GOP-led “discussions regarding our LGBTQ+ students.”

The district “supports positive representation of all children in literature, in which they can freely see themselves” and is “committed to including age-appropriate, non-sexually explicit reading materials in our libraries,” the letter said.

“We’re very supportive of having LBGTQ+ material in our library,” Jacobs added in a phone interview.

OCPS is the only Central Florida school district to face formal book challenges in recent months. But some parents and a retired teacher complained in October to the Osceola County School Board about “Lawn Boy: A Novel “by Jonathan Evison, which was on the shelves at Harmony High School, Fox35 reported. They did not like that it contained profanity and depicted a gay relationship.

Censorship foes said such objections make book critics’ motives clear.

“If sexual content was the issue, they’d be targeting Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway and the Bible,” said Katie Paris, an Ohio mother who founded the Red Wine & Blue Education Fund, which is running the “Book Ban Busters” campaign, during the group’s press conference.

In Orange, parent Alicia Farrant prompted three of the book reviews. She complained about “Gender Queer” and said she filed challenges to two other books in circulation at Boone High School, where two of her children attend. Those books are “Born a Crime,” by late-night talk show host Trevor Noah, and “Lawn Boy.”

So far, those challenges have been unsuccessful. “Born a Crime” and “Lawn Boy” remain in Boone’s library because the school staff reviewed them and decided they should stay on the shelves, said Lorena Arias, a district spokesperson, in an email.

Arias did not name the parent who filed the complaint but said the parent was unhappy with Boone’s decision and appealed it. Now a district-level literacy council will review the books and then make a recommendation on their fate, Arias said.

Farrant said all the books depict “graphic sexual encounters” and profanity.

“All of that is just completely inappropriate,” said Farrant, a member of Moms for Liberty who has filed paperwork to run for the Orange County School Board.

“I will do everything in my power to clean up our schools,” she said at a Jan. 11 school board meeting. “Our books should never, ever be sexually explicit.”

In addition to the challenges prompted by Farrant, OCPS also plans to review “All Boys Aren’t Blue” because of the “concerns” raised by the Flagler County school district, Arias said.

The book created a furor in Flagler in November when one school board member said George Johnson’s memoir of growing up Black and gay amounted to pornography.

A Flagler school committee determined the book should stay in libraries, but the district’s superintendent ordered it removed, at least temporarily, Flaglerlive.com reported.

OCPS will review that book after it has finished reviewing “Born a Crime” and “Lawn Boy,” Arias said. So for now 11 copies of “All Boys Aren’t’ Blue” are in circulation in OCPS schools, she said.

Johnson, whose book was published in 2020, has denounced the efforts — in Florida and at least seven other states — to remove “All Boys Aren’t Blue” from school libraries and to label it pornography, telling TIME magazine that is a mischaracterization of the sexual encounters he describes, which take up fewer than 10 pages of the 320-page book.

The book, Johnson added, is what “I wish I got to have when I was a youth struggling with the intersections of my Blackness and my queerness, and trying to navigate a society that wasn’t built for me.”

And those themes seem to be what really bother critics, he added.

The American Library Association in late November condemned what it called a “dramatic uptick” in challenges and books removals and said it was dismayed many of the books were ones that describe “lives of those who are gay, queer, or transgender or that tell the stories of persons who are Black, Indigenous, or persons of color.”

The association tallied 330 book challenges from September through November and expects 2021 s yearly total — to be released in the spring — will surpass the 377 reported in 2019, it said.

“This was a level 1 about a year ago. We’re at a level 10,” agreed Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America, which champions free speech.

The book critics, he said, do not seem to understand a key American principle. “Isn’t the most essential freedom the opportunity to go to a library and pick out a book that interests you?”

In 1975, members of a New York school board attended a conservative political conference and then decided to remove certain books they deemed anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and “just plain filthy” from their school libraries, among them “Slaughter House Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

A group of parents and students sued, and in 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor, saying the board violated students’ First Amendment rights.

“We hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books,” the court said.

But the opinion also noted school boards have broad discretion over which books are purchased for their libraries and used in their classes.

Cousins and Ferrell, worried about continued challenges, are cataloging other books in OCPS libraries they fear will be deemed “controversial,” a pre-emptive effort to try and make sure they do not disappear from school libraries.

They and other parents and some students speak regularly at school board meetings to share their views, including their desire for “Gender Queer” to be returned to the shelves.

Cousins, who has a child who identifies as non-binary, said the book was a “comfort” to them and could be to other children.

Ferrell agreed. “Our students have the right to access diverse materials in their school library,” she said.