Biden Dept Of Education Says Removing Explicit Books From Georgia Schools May Have Violated Students’ Civil Rights

NOTE: This article may include commentary reflecting the author’s position.

The Biden administration is taking a side in the culture war… and it’s against parents. Ok, groomers.

The Department of Education is challenging the removal of books from schools in Forsyth County, Georgia last year claiming that doing so may have created a “hostile environment” for students and could even have violated their civil rights.

No, really.

Here’s the WaPo report:

In a move that could affect how schools handle book challenges, the federal government has concluded that a Georgia school district’s removal of titles with Black and LGBTQ characters may have created a “hostile environment” for students, potentially violating their civil rights.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released its findings in a letter Friday wrapping up its investigation into Forsyth County Schools’ 2022 decision to pull nearly a dozen books from shelves after parents complained of titles’ sexual and LGBTQ content. To resolve the investigation, the district north of Atlanta agreed to offer “supportive measures” to students affected by the book removals and to administer a school climate survey, per the letter…
…The outcome in the Georgia case could affect how administrators in other districts and states manage book-removal requests. It comes as the country faces a historic rise in attempts to pull books from school libraries and classrooms. The majority of such challenges — which began to spike shortly after the coronavirus pandemic ignited culture wars in education — target books that deal with race, racism, and LGTBQ characters and themes, the American Library Association and free-expression advocacy group PEN America have repeatedly found.
Source: Washinton Post

There it is — the claim that this move is all about bigotry and and ginned up by “culture war” conservatives.

Remind me, who was it that brought in erotica for minors, graphic novels that are essentially soft-core porn, and illustrated how-to books on gay sex into schools without telling parents? Was it the right or the sex-obsessed left that did that?

That’s how this always works — the left starts the culture war and then freaks out if the right reacts.

While the WaPo article paints the book removals as racism and bigotry against the ever-expanding LGBTQ+ crowd, that isn’t accurate.

The school district in Georgia was reviewing what was age-appropriate for students.

In 2022, Forsyth County News reported that several books were removed from shelves after a review found that they contained sexually explicit material.

The interesting thing to note here is that although the alarm was raised by a parent, it was the school staff members who came up with the list of books that should be reviewed and possibly removed.

Forsyth County Schools recently decided to remove eight books from all of its schools’ media centers after a review found they contained “sexually explicit content.”
This decision came after a parent notified Superintendent Dr. Jeff Bearden and the Forsyth County Board of Education of concerns they had with sexually explicit material they found in books offered at school media centers in the district.
Bearden asked school staff members to find and review any material they believed may contain explicit content. From there, staff came up with a list of 15 different books they reviewed.
Source: Forsyth County News

After examining 15 books, the school district chose to remove 8 from all schools completely, make 4 available at the high school level only, 2 were put back on shelves, and one that had been challenged by a parent prior to the review is still pending.

Here are the 8 books that were completely removed from the Forsyth schools:

• “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” by George M. Johnson (1 copy at South Forsyth HS)
• “Looking for Alaska,” by John Green (1 copy at South Forsyth HS)
• “L8r, g8r,” by Lauren Myracle (1 copy at South Forsyth MS)
• “Me Earl and the Dying Girl,” by Jesse Andrews (1 copy at North Forsyth HS)
• “Nineteen Minutes,” by Jodi Picoult (3 copies total at North Forsyth HS, West Forsyth HS and Forsyth Central HS)
• “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Perez (1 copy at Denmark HS)
• “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison (2 copies total at South Forsyth HS and West Forsyth HS)
• “The Infinite Moment of Us,” by Lauren Myracle (1 copy Forsyth Central HS)

Isn’t it funny how we’re supposed to “trust the educators” when it comes to introducing radical gender ideology and critical race theory ideas into classrooms, but not those other educators that oppose it, isn’t it?

The books make up a fraction of what is available to students, but they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Since the lockdowns, parents have been giving examples at school board meetings of some of the explicit material found in classrooms and school libraries, and that includes these books.

Here’s one brave dad reading an explicit excerpt from “Me, Earl and The Dying Girl” at a school board meeting last year:

Here’s another parent reading from “The Bluest Eye”:

And one more from “All Boys Aren’t Blue”:

A mother exposed "All Boys Aren't Blue" at our school board meeting a year ago when we began to realize that sexually inappropriate material like this was available to our children at the school library.

It depicts incestual sodomy.

Tell me how this is book banning again?🧵 pic.twitter.com/HGju6NsS4X

— Lisa Logan (@iamlisalogan) November 17, 2022

Remember, these schools also have “trigger warnings” for history lessons because it might be “traumatizing” to discuss Christopher Columbus discovering the New World.

The one good thing about the COVID lockdowns is that they exposed the absolute garbage that schools have been shoving at students unbeknownst to parents.

If the Department of Education is so upset that books featuring black and LGBTQ+ characters are being disproportionately targeted for removal, maybe ask the question why those books in particular are so often sexually explicit. Why do the authors like Toni Morrison and George M. Johnson have to add in rape, incest, and child molestation in stories centered around a black character? Bonus question: Why do schools need to provide them to students?

I don’t want to hear another word about “MAGA Extremists” when Democrats are defending these sorts of books in schools.

Insisting that sexually explicit material be made available for minors in publicly-funded schools is extreme.

Maybe we need to call the perverts “Democrat Groomers” since that’s precisely what they are.

You should recognize where America is right now.

National Divorce gonna keep gaining popularity. You can’t share a country like this.

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) May 22, 2023

The Left is spitting mad because they know that they’re losing in the court of public opinion. It turns out that normal people don’t like people grooming their children.

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Sources:

1. Natanson, Hannah; and Rosenzweig-Ziff, Dan. “Book removals may have violated student civil rights, Education Dept. says.” Washington Post. May 22, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/05/22/book-bans-georgia-hostile-environment/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social

2. Kerns, Sabrina. “Forsyth County Schools remove eight books for ‘sexually explicit content’ amid nationwide library debate.” Forsyth County News. August 19, 2022. https://www.forsythnews.com/news/education/forsyth-county-schools-remove-eight-books-for-sexually-explicit-content-amid-nationwide-library-debate/