Banned In Georgia

Is becoming the new “Banned in Boston” Boston used to be know a prude city with its Puritan history well the South is taking over for Boston in banning books.

Movement would ban LGBTQ books, online materials from school libraries
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Ty Tagami
January 2, 2022

Younger students may not find the same support if lawmakers make it easier to ban books and materials from school libraries.

A national movement targeting materials considered obscene is gaining traction in Georgia. It has won powerful support in the Georgia General Assembly that convenes this month. House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, a Republican from Milton, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in November that “children should be shielded from age inappropriate materials” and that she is writing legislation to accomplish that in schools.

Jones said she wants a uniform statewide process for filtering online materials accessible through schools. And she said she wants to give parents more influence over selections. She isn’t specifically identifying transgender issues, but others are.

When former State Schools Superintendent John Barge announced in November that he was campaigning for his old job, he said schools are not the place for “talking to children about, you know, they can be whatever gender they want to be.”

And Noelle Kahaian, director of the anti-obscenity group Protect Student Health Georgia, testified at the Georgia General Assembly last spring for legislation that would standardize the process for banning materials. She also wants an exemption for school librarians removed from a state law that allows prosecution of people who provide “harmful” materials to minors. (The law focuses on visual representations involving sex.)

Kahaian said materials involving transgender issues do not belong in public schools. She thinks they are fueling a “social contagion” of children questioning their gender. “Any ideology, especially surrounding sexuality, should be the parents’ domain,” she said.

And so it begins…

In Iowa,

LGBTQ advocates: Book banning is precursor for rocky legislative session
Iowa Capital Dispatch
By: Katie Akin 
December 8, 2021

As school boards around the Des Moines metro debate the inclusion of certain queer books in school libraries, LGBTQ advocacy groups are preparing for attacks in the upcoming legislative session.

Iowa school boards in recent weeks have seen spirited debates over allowing books with sexual content — including many with LGBTQ themes — in school libraries. Several districts have removed “Gender Queer,” a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about gender dysphoria and sexuality. The comic book depicts scenes of masturbation and sexual fantasizing in a larger narrative about discovering one’s identity.

[…]

Becky Smith, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, said that she has closely observed the movement “remove books that contain either subject matter or characters or storylines of either students of color, Black and Brown stories, or stories around LGBTQ identities specifically.” 

In Tennessee,

Tennessee GOP wants to ban books that 'promote' LGBT lifestyles from school libraries
Insider
By Canela López 
March 26, 2021


Bruce Griffey, a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, drafted and introduced the bill before he was removed from the Education Instruction Subcommittee on March 25.

[...]

"The promotion of LGBT issues and lifestyles in public schools offends a significant portion of students, parents, and Tennessee residents with Christian values," Griffey wrote in the bill. 

[…]

The proposal to ban LGBTQ+ books and educational materials from schools has legal precedent, as state lawmakers have attempted to pass similar bills since the 1990s, according to the National Coalition Against Censorship. 

NPR reported,

More Republican leaders try to ban books on race, LGBTQ issues
By Deepa Shivaram
November 13, 2021


In the latest call from Republican leaders to ban certain books in schools, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is telling his state's department of education to investigate a graphic novel on queer identity being available at a school's library. He says the content in the book is "sexually explicit" and "pornographic."

[...]

In a Virginia county, two school board members want to burn the books

In Virginia's Spotsylvania County, the school board recently voted to remove books in school libraries that had any "sexually explicit" material.

One book in particular that caused outrage is Adam Rapp's 33 Snowfish, with a storyline that includes drug addiction, prostitution and violence.

[...]

During Banned Books Week, Readers Explore What It Means To Challenge Texts

Two school board members, Rabih Abuismail and Kirk Twigg, went on to say they would like to see the banned books burned.

[…]

Book burning was a practice perpetuated in Nazi Germany in order to oppress authors and ideas that were in opposition to Nazi ideology.

From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

Beginning on May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were “un-German.” The book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires. The book burnings stood as a powerful symbol of Nazi intolerance and censorship.

German students and Nazi SA members plunder the
library  of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Director of the
 Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin

Also May of that year,

LGBTQ Institute in Germany Was Burned Down by Nazis
The resources and data at Institut für Sexualwissenschaft were never replaced.
Teen Vogue
By Lucy Diavolo
September 20, 2017


On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor of Germany. His rise to power ushered in Nazi control of the country and led to the horrors of the Holocaust. Among those targeted by the Third Reich were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. LGBTQ people would be sent to concentration camps alongside Jews, the disabled, and many more — but one of the Nazis's first shows of force against Germany’s LGBTQ community was an attack on information.

On May 6, 1933, Nazi demonstrators raided the libraries of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a German name that roughly translates to the Institute of Sexology. The Institute was a privately operated research space for studies of human sexuality. More than 20,000 books were taken from shelves and burned days later in the streets by Nazi youth groups.

This is the Republicans pushing their hate to create wedge politics, to divide our country and want to create an authoritarian government .