Censorship has always worn the mask of morality. Today, it’s wearing a school board badge and is running for re-election in counties all across North Carolina. Removing books from library shelves is a request brought up in front of Boards of Education like clockwork. This fight for school book banning isn’t a new concept, in fact, it is one I have been familiar with since middle school.
Growing up as an LGBTQ+ teenager has been a complex experience. In my childhood, before I had the words to describe who I was, I found them in a book someone else now calls ‘inappropriate’. The most painfully ironic part of this is that as I was just beginning to see myself represented in any sort of media, it was taken away. Back then, my thirteen year-old-self didn’t see the gravity of the situation. I was confused, of course, but I tucked the memory away like some sort of secret. There must be some good reason, I often thought to myself. Some real, strong reason why a graphic novel that briefly mentions a lesbian character was taken out of my school library. Maybe it wasn’t checked out enough. Maybe it was too old, and they were simply replacing it. It didn’t take me long to realize the true motive behind it all, it only took a quick look at the data.
More than half of the books targeted in recent school bans include LGBTQ+ characters or themes, and that’s no accident. In fact, in my very own school district, books were flagged simply because of LGBTQ+ themes or authors, an action self-initiated by the school board. Recently, I had the opportunity to dig deeper into these bans, viewing it from another perspective. I sat down with a local politician, a man who had served on my local school board the year that eight books were removed and forty were put up for review. It was during this conversation that the gravity of the bans really set in. Naturally, I had thousands of questions, ranging from the criteria they considered, the depth to which they read the books, and the values they allowed to guide them throughout this process. And he had answers. I didn’t expect to hear it so bluntly, but he confirmed my fears. In the name of ‘protecting children,’ schools are erasing the existence of LGBTQ+ youth from their libraries, and the people carrying it out are more than aware of their reasoning, in fact, they are proud of it. He called it inappropriate, immoral, and even ‘foreign’. But, how foreign is it really, if the student he is sitting across from is the very person he is targeting? It is this upfront ignorance that poses the largest threat. You can ban the books, but LGBTQ+ kids still exist, and they still deserve to be seen.
But, these hateful comments don’t only affect LBTQ+ youth in our schools, they affect everyone. The blatant censorship of BIPOC stories, LGBTQ+ stories, and stories from victims of violence and assault, raises concerns about the liberties and freedoms of students. Book banning is not just educational overreach, it’s a direct attack on the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects the right to speak, but also the right to receive information, including through books containing ideas that some find uncomfortable. In my AP American Government and Politics course, we discussed the SCOTUS case Tinker v. Des Moines, which ultimately set the precedent that students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate’, and book bans violate this principle, plain and simple. Later, in Island Trees v. Pico (1982), the Supreme Court ruled that public school officials cannot remove books from libraries simply because they dislike their content or disagree with their message, more directly acknowledging censorship’s attack on personal freedoms. Public schools are government institutions, and when they ban books, it becomes a matter of state-sponsored censorship. The hypocrisy here is that the same politician I sat down with had detailed earlier in the conversation his value of individual rights and freedoms. But the truth is: you can’t claim to defend freedom while banning books written by and for marginalized voices.
At the end of the day, you can ban the books, but you can’t ban the people who live the truths inside them. LGBTQ+ students aren’t going anywhere, and neither are our stories.The First Amendment doesn’t come with exceptions for discomfort. Book bans aren’t about protecting students. They’re about controlling them. And in a democracy, that should alarm all of us. If schools are truly meant to educate, not indoctrinate, then all students deserve access to the full spectrum of human experience. Some of us survived because of a book. Others came out because of a book. And far too many are now being told their stories are too dangerous to be read. We owe them better.
About the Author: Elizabeth Brinson is a high school senior in the southeastern part of North Carolina. Brinson is a proud LGBTQ+ member and advocate with a passion for civil engagement and education equity who plans to go into Cognitive Science and Public Health, with a goal of expanding health and education resources to underserved communities.