If you think your freedoms are not under attack, think again.
The current assault on literary outlets is perhaps the most pernicious in the country’s whole history. Numerous outlets are under attack, and all of these attacks are designed to limit the public’s right to read, know, and be informed.
Here’s a partial list of the pervasiveness of censorship activities.
While past efforts at censorship in school libraries focused on single titles, more recent efforts seek to restrict multiple titles. During the school year from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2024, there were 3,000 listed instances of attempted book bans in school libraries, representing a 30% increase over the previous year. However, not all attempts are reported.
School librarians are being singled out as targets as well. As of May 2023, seven states had passed laws to criminally prosecute school librarians for “providing sexually explicit, obscene or harmful books” to children. In Arkansas, librarians could face imprisonment for up to six years if found guilty. Try to define “harmful.”
Public libraries are not immune to censorship activities. Llano County, Texas considered closing its public libraries rather than follow a court order to return a banned book to its shelves. The Patmos Library in Jamestown Charter Township, Michigan, lost funding after librarians refused to ban Gender Queer. Over the last couple of years, this book has been the most frequently banned or restricted.
Even Little Free Libraries come under scrutiny. A Utah law requires school libraries to throw out books selected for banning; they can’t be sold or given away. A Democratic state representative posted on social media that she would be marking Banned Book Week by sharing some books banned from the public schools in Little Free Libraries. She was threatened with prosecution by fellow state representatives.
The bookstore chain Barnes and Noble was sued by a Virginia legislator to block the chain from selling “obscene” books to minors without parental consent. The book in question was Gender Queer. Why is there an automatic assumption that bookstores don’t exercise some discretion in the materials they sell to minors?
“Regrettably, [President Trump] has a vast cadre of acolytes who are willing and eager to follow his example in attacking the foundations of knowledge and intellectual freedom.”
Even publishers are targeted. Governor Lee of Tennessee signed a law that puts book publishers, sellers, and distributors at risk of prosecution for providing written materials to the state’s public schools “that may at any point be deemed obscene.” Offenders found guilty face a sentence of one to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The phrase “at any point” is especially poignant because it is so indefinite. A book found to be perfectly acceptable today (by whomever) may suddenly become objectionable at the whim of a single individual who is affronted by something in it.
Florida’s HB-1069 requires books challenged for sexual conduct be removed from academic libraries during the review process. (Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?) Tennessee expanded its Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022. It called for the removal of books containing nudity, excessive violence, or depicting sexual acts. Is the Bible going to be banned in Tennessee, or just the book of Genesis, where Lot has sex with his daughters, or Adam and Eve are nude; or the book of Joshua, which details the sacking of Jericho and the murder of every “man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, and they burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.” Excessive violence? Pillage?
In February of this year, the School Library Journal reported that the Department of Defense had told schools serving military families to pull lessons tied to immigration, gender, and sexuality from their curriculum and remove books that could “potentially” cover those topics.
CNN reported in May that the Pentagon ordered all military academies to identify and remove books from their libraries that deal with race, gender ideology, and other “divisive concepts.” If military academy cadets are considered mature enough to face the rigors and possibly death from military service, why are they assumed to be so immature that they can’t deal with controversial subjects? Without addressing such subjects in an open forum, how can one ever engage intellectually?
Censorship extends even into the highest levels of academia. Early this year, President Trump fired the Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, apparently over a complex situation regarding Trump’s first-term indictment for unauthorized retention and concealment of documents belonging to the United States, following the National Archives and Records Administration’s assistance in securing those documents. The law, passed by Congress, requires that all such documents be returned by any President upon his leaving office.
In March of this year, the entire staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services was placed on 90-day administrative leave. This action curtailed all disbursals of grants to libraries and museums across the country.
In May, President Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and first African-American to hold that position. Her term was due to expire in 2026, but apparently, that was not soon enough to satisfy the President’s rapacious appetite to emasculate the intellectual community of this country.
Regrettably, he has a vast cadre of acolytes who are willing and eager to follow his example in attacking the foundations of knowledge and intellectual freedom.
In her book Keeping the Faith, Brenda Wineapple comments, “… the Fundamentalists were planning to censor books, strong-arm publishers, control libraries, alter textbooks, and harass teachers.” Her book is about the 1925 Scopes trial, and she was referring to the efforts to ban the teaching of evolution in schools.
But what was happening in 1925 is happening again right now, except the efforts are directed against sexuality, gender identity, DEI, and the LGBTQ community. And it’s as pervasive and as insidious now as it was 100 years ago. The movement is directed against the enlightenment of humanity, just as it was then.
So, if you have any doubts that your intellectual freedom is in peril, look at the record. It is replete with instances that will surely change your mind.
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Written by Chuck Witt, a retired architect, a former newspaper columnist, and a lifelong resident of Winchester. Cross-posted from WinCity Voices.
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