“What I tell kids is, Don’t get mad, get even. Don’t spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don’t walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.” ― Stephen King
HB29, a new law that makes it much easier for a few outliers to ban books from every school district in the state of Utah, is a particularly odious piece of legislation.
Rammed through by the Legislature’s Republican supermajority, and cravenly signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, the law would remove from the shelves of every public school library in the state any book that has been determined to contain “objective sensitive material” by either three public school districts or two school districts and five charter schools.
(The Utah State Board of Education would have the power to override any ban for districts that didn’t impose it themselves.)
What’s that mean? Well, judging from recent controversies, probably any book that portrays LGBT people as human beings. Or that reminds us of how despicably people have treated each other over the years.
Local control? Community standards? Free thought and inquiry? Literature that teaches empathy and understanding? Not around here.
Not if you can pressure school boards representing as little as 10% of the state’s student population to capitulate to the book-banners. Who, as the social media meme explains, have never been the good guys at any time in history.
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