I Had A Complaint!

Just one, that all it took for a Republican to order the book pulled from the library shelf, just one complaint to prevent the whole town from reading the book.

OP-ED | STOP USING CHILDREN TO ADVANCE YOUR OWN BIGOTRY
CT News Junkie
By Susan Bigelow
July 6, 2022


Pride Month has come to an end, and Colchester First Selectman Andreas Bisbikos decided to celebrate by demanding that a book about RuPaul be pulled from the shelves of the children’s section at the Cragin Memorial Library.

Bisbikos, a Republican, told library director Kate Byroade to remove the book following a parent complaint that he had received. She admirably held her ground as librarians do, pointing to the established library policy and process about book challenges. Bisbikos settled for the book being displayed at the library desk while it was under review, and instructed librarians to conduct an “inventory” of the over 20,000 books in the children’s section. He posted a statement about this on his Facebook page, where things did not go well for him in the comments.

The people from Colchester and Connecticut didn’t like the idea of censorship very much…

Following an absolute drenching deluge of criticism from people in Colchester and around the country, the first selectman backpedaled, stating that his action was “never about censorship,” that his office “plays no role in what books are purchased and displayed in our library,” and that he was just responding to parent concerns.

A parent.

Just one parent.

Just one parent dictated what the whole town could read.

That one parent couldn’t have been satisfied by telling her child not to read it, but Noooo… that parent wanted the whole town not to read the book just because they did like the book and, and, and... the Republican First Selectman went along with the idea of controlling what people could read and not read.