Oppose Nationwide Book Ban Bill

Rather than prosecuting people involved in child sex trafficking, House Republicans are trying to “Stop the Sexualization of Children” by turning the blame against teachers, librarians, and LGBTQ+ people. They have proposed H.R. 7661, a bill to block funding for schools or programs that provide access to “sexually oriented material” to people under the age of 18; effectively, a book ban.

While the bill specifies “sexually oriented material” as “nude adults, individuals who are stripping, or lewd or lascivious dancing,” it also groups in tangential issues of gender, specifically “gender dysphoria or transgenderism”, highlighting the primary target of this bill. Books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes—particularly stories featuring transgender/genderqueer characters and/or people of color—have been disproportionately targeted in recent calls for book bannings, the majority of which have come not from parents or individual readers, but from organized, well-funded groups with strong ties to conservative politics. Though H.R. 7661 makes a few exceptions for certain “classic” works of art and literature, they are confined to pieces catalogued in four already contentious lists, two of which come from a homeschooling company focused on teaching “a Biblical worldview”. Critics have argued that “the legislation would use the tools of access to materials as a form of discrimination on those children, those families, that are not majority population,” noting how “H.R. 7661 isn’t fundamentally about protecting kids. It’s about giving politicians broad authority to restrict whose stories are allowed on our shelves.”

H.R. 7661 is a clear continuation of the Trump administration’s blatant attacks on transgender and other LGBTQ+ people, but many fear that its vague language would also allow Congress to attack other materials and ban them beyond schools and libraries. Access to literature, art, and information is a human right, and there is no place for book bans or governmental censorship in a free and democratic society. Tell your representatives to oppose H.R. 7661 and any attempts to censor our stories.