Hi all! I’m Emily, Annie’s Foundation’s newest board member. By way of introduction, I grew up in Des Moines, attending an excellent public high school where I was required to read such obscenities as The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and Slaughterhouse Five. My mom spent more than thirty years as a public-school reading teacher, so it’s not surprising that my parents had the philosophy that there is no such thing as too many books. I spent hours at the public library, filling my check-out bag with such masterpieces as Flowers in the Attic, Clan of the Cave Bear, and the entire works of Stephen King. After high school, I received a degree in biology from Grinnell College, worked in biomedical research for a few years, went to the University of Iowa College of Law, and spent more than a decade helping clients protect their inventions while working at one of Iowa’s most prominent law firms. Along the way, I interned for a federal judge, developed an innovative online delivery system for legal services that was recognized by Forbes magazine, was honored as a Business Record Forty Under 40, was a frequent columnist for The Des Moines Register, and became chief legal counsel for an international biotech R & D company. All of this is not meant to be braggy, but instead is to highlight that you can read a whole lot of naughty books and still turn out ok.
I’m the parent of a high school senior and have done my best to foster the same love of reading in my daughter as my parents instilled in me. Which is why, in the fall of 2021, I found myself sitting in a school board meeting for the first time in my life. That night, the board was considering a parent’s challenge to books that were used in my daughter’s 10th grade Language Arts class: The Hate U Give and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I’ll get into details in a later post about what unfolded at that board meeting, but for now I will just say that the meeting and its aftermath compelled me to get involved in the fight to protect our kids’ right to read.
Luckily that night, reason won out and the majority of the board voted to retain the challenged books. However, this book challenge proved to be just the beginning of a more extensive and concerning effort. Similar challenges began emerging in other districts across Iowa, all sharing a common theme: individuals seeking to remove books that they personally deemed obscene or pornographic, with a consistent target on books featuring LGBTQ+ and/or racially diverse characters.
It became apparent that these challenges were not isolated incidents, but were actually a part of a much larger national effort. The challengers, presenting themselves as concerned parents, were almost always affiliated with the anti-government extremist organization Moms for Liberty. Originating in Florida with close ties to Ron Desantis, Moms for Liberty seeks to wage culture wars against LGBTQ+ and BIPOC kids under the guise of protecting children.
These challenges almost always failed, much to the dismay of the book banners. Luckily for the banners, Moms for Liberty has the ear of the governor and Republican state legislators, who were more than willing to use the power of their elected positions to draft and enact the so-called “Parental Rights” law (SF496). SF496 effectively strips the books that Moms for Liberty hates out of our public schools, carrying with it the threat of penalties for educators who dare provide these books to students.
Where does all of this leave us? As of today, the constitutionality of SF496 is currently being litigated in an Iowa federal court. The judge recently issued an injunction preventing the state from enforcing the penalty portion of the law as it pertains to books until the lawsuit is resolved.
Despite the judge’s indication that the law is likely unconstitutional, the book banning advocates persist in using our schools as battlegrounds for their culture wars. In a particularly gross moment just last month, one of our district’s extremist board members used a Zoom board meeting to dramatically recite parts of The Handmaid’s Tale that she found offensive. Sitting under a cross, she read a detailed rape scene, theatrically struggling to actually read certain explicit words and resorting to spell them. Her point? She believes that if she posted that out-of-context page from the book on her Facebook account, it would be removed for being offensive. From her perspective, this means that the entire book must be legally obscene and, consequently, should not be allowed in our schools. Don’t get me wrong—I agree with her that a rape scene is offensive and hard to read. But, I firmly believe that high school students should have the right to read this type of material since the nightmarish, misogynistic society described in The Handmaid’s Tale appears to be the direction the book banners want to take us. Our kids’ ability to read books like those that are being taken out of our schools helps promote inclusivity, tolerance and the defense of human rights, and are essential to safeguard against the extremists who are trying to reshape our society in their white, straight, Christian image.
Like our school board member, those advocating for removing access to books use emotionally charged accusations in an attempt to garner support for the notion that kids need to be protected from books. The book banners scream that our school libraries contain pornography, teachers are pushing woke ideology on students, and that they alone are safeguarding our children’s innocence. These arguments are purely performative in nature, designed to elicit an emotional response from parents by framing the issue as protecting children from objectionable content.
The challenge lies in the fact that schools do not, in reality, contain pornography. The book banners are loudly proclaiming the existence of a problem that does not actually exist. While their impassioned cries suggest a burning issue that demands a resolution, it’s essential to recognize that they are not even remotely grounded in reality.
This brings me to the point of this blog. We’re going to explore the actual facts and law surrounding book bans and answer some pressing questions like:
- Is government censorship of books in public schools legal?
- Can removing books from schools be considered a “ban”?
- Does being a parent give you the legal right to dictate what everyone else’s child in a school is taught?
- What rights do public school kids have when it comes to reading books?
- Is there pornography in our schools?
We’ll focus on these questions in the context of SF496, but along the way will explore other issues such as:
- Is Dr. Seuss really banned?
- What does labeling someone who advocates for kids’ right to read as a groomer or a pedophile really say about the accuser?
- Under the actual legal test, could Gender Queer (aka the banners’ most hated book) ever be deemed obscene?
Let’s set up some ground rules for this blog. I’m happy to field questions, so long as they are at least somewhat respectful. And, if they’re not, I may respond anyway. I will do my best to explain the law as I see it. If I get something wrong, which I most definitely will, feel free to challenge me. These posts don’t contain professional advice, just me trying to make sense of a complicated landscape. I look forward to adding this perspective to Annie’s Foundation’s fight to ensure that every student has the right to unhindered access to diverse books with characters and subjects that reflect the diversity and complexity of the world around them.