The Tennesse Equality Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, released a report titled “Book Censorship in Tennessee” that examines the subjects and authorship behind challenged books in Tennessee. The report found that seven out of nine of the most challenged book have queer themes or were written by an LGBTQ+ author.
“Book challenges most likely to succeed include LGBTQ+ content, themes on race and social issues are second most common, then third is content with both race and LGBTQ+ themes,” the report stated.
Related:
Aly Chapman undertook hours and hours of research when writing the report, poring over hundreds of documents, interviewing advocates in Tennessee counties with the most book challenges, and watching over 50 hours of school board and local municipality readings.
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The report found that “Tennessee’s public libraries, public schools, and the professionals who manage them are being attacked by well-funded censorship campaigns and bad actors.” These bad actors include elected leaders, private citizens, and organizations.
Most of them rely on the same ideas for banning books. “Their similar language has to do with protecting children. Like I said, biblical references. They refer to things like ‘gender ideology,’” Chapman said. “Gender ideology” is an expression often used by conservatives to deride trans people, implying that their identities are the result of an ideology.
The anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group Moms for Liberty supports removing some books from libraries, but the group denies that they are anti-LGBTQ+.
Chapter Chair Amanda Price said, “Moms for Liberty is not interested in banning LGBTQ representation from libraries. That is a straw man to detract from the extreme sexually explicit material that has been distributed to minors without parental knowledge or consent.”
Holly Ashley works for Crossroads Ministries, but instead of pushing to remove books, she floods libraries with religious books.
“Well, we believe that the Bible is the final authority, right? So if you’re going to have an issue that you want to debate with someone with biblical values, in the middle of the Bible Belt, then you need to have some books with biblical doctrine in them. You can’t just be one-sided,” Ashley said.
She has donated over 500 gospel-themed books to Wilson County Schools so that students seeking a book with LGBTQ+ representation may stumble upon religious books instead.
The report, which can be found here, recommends that local governments increase transparency. It includes a toolkit for those who wish to get involved.
