Federal civil rights investigation sparked by removal of LGBTQ+ books from school library

(Scott Threlkeld/The Advocate via AP)

Is removing controversial, sexually explicit books from school libraries a civil rights violation?

The federal government and the ACLU of Texas seem to think so.

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NBC News and ProPublica published a breathless story about an ogre of a school superintendent requesting that school librarians remove explicit LGBTQ+ and gender ideology books from the school library.

After a school board election where two board members won based upon their promise to remove such books from school libraries, the superintendent informed librarians of the policy change. The librarians secretly recorded him (as if informing them of a change in school policy was required a whistleblower exposé) and the ACLU swung into high gear. The feds have swooped in to investigate the school for violating the civil rights of LGBTQ students.

Shocking, I know, that a school board may want librarians to be more discriminating in the books that they choose to stock. I wonder if their magazine section includes Juggs, Big Booties, and Bear Monthly? When I read Penthouse letters as a teen the mags came from my brother’s stash under his bed.

The average school library is not exactly the Library of Congress in size, so we are not talking about “banning” books by any means. No library contains anything other than a tiny tiny sliver of the publications available, and every book is purchased as the result of a curation process that rejects far more books than it selects.

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So don’t give me any BS about these rejected books being “banned.” If parents want their children reading them they are easily available.

“I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women and there are women that think they’re men,” Glenn told librarians in January, according to a leaked recording of the meeting obtained, verified and published exclusively by the news outlets. “I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”

Later in the meeting, Glenn clarified that he was specifically focused on removing books geared toward queer students: “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books,” he said, according to the recording.

The comments, combined with the district’s subsequent decision to remove dozens of library books pending a review, fostered a “pervasively hostile” environment for LGBTQ students, the ACLU wrote in its complaint. Chloe Kempf, an ACLU attorney, said the Education Department’s decision to open the investigation into Granbury ISD signals that the agency is concerned about what she described as “a wave” of anti-LGBTQ policies and book removals nationally.

We are talking about books far more explicit than anything you can imagine. Twitter gives you a warning before you can see the photos from books that are available to schoolchildren, which tells you everything you need to know.

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These books can contain graphic verbal and pictorial descriptions of sex acts that are indisputably inappropriate for children. We are not talking about To Kill a Mockingbird or Huck Finn. We are talking about bondage and other sexual how-to books. Parents have more than enough reason to not want the schools to be pushing these books on children.

But that isn’t how the ACLU–which is inconsistent regarding censorship on social media platforms when it comes to political speech these days–sees it, and we shall see what Joe Biden’s Justice Department has to say. The idea that civil rights laws require schools to teach kids about performing sex acts on each other or even adults is ridiculous. Or it would be in any other age.

The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books.

Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC NewsProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified Granbury school officials on Dec. 6 that it had opened the investigation following a July complaint by the ACLU, which accused the district of violating a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. The ACLU complaint was based largely on an investigation published in March by NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune that revealed that Granbury’s superintendent, Jeremy Glenn, instructed librarians to remove books dealing with sexual orientation and people who are transgender.

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It is notable that none of the stories done on these controversies ever reveal the content of the books. If they did the public might be a bit more hostile to what is going on.

I did show the contents, though, in a discussion with a relative who was arguing that removing these books from libraries was wrong. His experience–he is a liberal in his 70s–was from another era when the controversies were about race relations. To Kill a Mockingbird was once controversial, and these days Huck Finn is because of the use of a racial epithet. Those were more innocent times.

When I emailed photos from one of the books–Gender Queer, in this case–his response was curt: that doesn’t belong in any public library.

Not because it is LGBTQ content–if the book were aimed at teens and purely heterosexual in nature, it still wouldn’t belong. It is just not age appropriate.

We are moving into an era where the federal government is looking to force schools to carry books promoting ever more bizarre behaviors and activities that parents believe are immoral. There will be no provisions for community standards, dissent from the Leftist approved Narrative, or even religious objections.

Schools are getting filled not just with liberals–that is par for the course–but Leftist perverts looking to indoctrinate children. We have drag queen teachers performing in schools, libraries with drag queens putting children in their laps and flashing their asses, and books informing children how to log onto Grindr.

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This is not benign.

Schools have become recruiting grounds, if not for pedophiles–and to be honest, all schools have had trouble with that forever and it is an underreported problem–but for gender ideologues.

It is not the role of public schools to do this. Parents, not teachers, librarians, or federal bureaucrats are the primary moral teachers.

Elections have consequences, and recent elections have had horrible ones.

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