It Happened Here!

Book banning has happened here in Connecticut!

A CT leader’s decision to pull a children’s book about pronouns from library display called ‘censorship’

The Hartford Courant

By Pamela McLoughlin

March 18, 2023

Suffield First Selectman Colin Moll was criticized this week by a handful of residents for his decision to remove a children’s book about pronouns from a display at Kent Memorial Library.

In addition to the traditional she, her, he, him pronouns in a the book written for 4- to 8- year-old children, it includes the more recent they, them, their pronouns when referring to individuals whose gender identity is fluid.

Moll said in response to the controversy that he had the book taken off display, but had not banned or removed it from the library shelf, and that was in response to a resident’s complaint.

It wasn’t the material that prompted him to do it, he said, but rather because, “It’s my job to respond to residents.”

Banning the book because of “a handful” of people objected to it, I wonder what would happen if a handful of people objected to the violence in the Bible?

Some of the words and phrases residents directed at Moll during the public speaking portion of Wednesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting included: “abuse of power,” “disappointed, angry and resolute,” “censorship,” embarrassed.”

Kristen Hamilton, who read the book with her fourth-grader, said during the meeting that there are “way more copies of this book floating around,” than there would have been without the controversy. She said the move to take the book off display was a “disappointment” and embarrassment.”

It is wrong for “a handful” to be able dictate to a whole town and tell them what they can and cannot read! And the people are speaking out over the censorship.

Another resident, Amy Healy, said during the meeting that the book is one that could make “LGBTQ plus children and adults feel welcome in the library, feel acknowledged and at less risk for suicide.”

However some of the Republicans are supporting the pulling of the book. One said,

The book was on display, but there was “no balance,” he said. He did not elaborate.

Tell me how do you balance a book that is about accepting and affirming? One with hate and exclusion?

---

Connecticut Republicans are stating to follow the insanities in other states.

School library book bans are seen as targeting LGBTQ content

AP News

By Scott McFetridge, Anthony Izaguirre and Sara Cline

March 20, 2023

Teri Patrick bristles at the idea she wants to ban books about LGBTQ issues in Iowa schools, arguing her only goal is ridding schools of sexually explicit material.

Sara Hayden Parris says that whatever you want to call it, it’s wrong for some parents to think a book shouldn’t be readily available to any child if it isn’t right for their own child.

The viewpoints of the two mothers from suburban Des Moines underscore a divide over LGBTQ content in books as Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds pushes an especially sweeping crackdown on content in Iowa school libraries. The bill she’s backing could result in the removal of books from school libraries in all of the state’s 327 districts if they’re successfully challenged in any one of them.

School boards and legislatures nationwide also are facing questions about books and considering making it easier to limit access.

“We’re seeing these challenges arise in almost every state of the union,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “It’s a national phenomenon.”

The difference between the two sides is the fact that the anti-LGBTQ side sees anything LGBTQ as obscene while everyone else does not.