Buck: ‘Self-appointed morality police’ have no place in schools
Across the nation, people are standing up and speaking up for the freedom of expression and freedom to read. Recently, famous authors including Judy Blume spoke at the Rally for the Right to Read in Chicago. Community members in Hoboken created a Banned Books Read-a-Thon to celebrate imagination. Here in State College, the staff of Webster’s Bookstore Café joined the Pride parade in a vehicle decked out with messages defending the right to be who we are and read and write what we like.
Of course, these stands for freedom have not arisen in a vacuum. The Orwellianly-named Moms for Liberty and local affiliates like Lions for Liberty are fomenting a moral panic about race, gender and sex in their ongoing war with public schools and public libraries.
On May 10, school board candidate Megan Layng submitted a Right-to-Know request for all the books held in the State College Area School District’s libraries. She received a 682-page list with thousands of titles. Having looked over the list, my first feeling was of intense gratitude to live in a district with a rich library resource and such dedicated librarians.
Apparently, Ms. Layng and her comrades disagree. At the July 10 State College Area School District board meeting, they read cherry-picked excerpts from a memoir by a queer Black author into the public record. They stammered and paused on words and phrases they allegedly find objectionable in “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a “memoir-manifesto” that explores what it’s like to grow up Black and queer. For all the compassion and understanding we can gain from reading it, our local morality police decry the memoir as pornography whose inclusion in the library breaks obscenity laws.
As just one sitting school board member, I have questions. If this is pornography, why are they reading it in public? If they think the book is dangerous to children, why are they reading it in front of children? We have a student representative who sits on our board. Did they ask for their or their parents’ consent to read it? I was not asked. C-NET viewers were not asked. If it is illegal, should we call the police for a violation of obscenity laws and bring charges against a school board candidate?
No. Because it is not the substance that matters. It is shock, awe and hyperbolic emotionalism.
When I was a kid in the 1980s, the self-appointed morality police of the Parents Musical Resource Center (PMRC) did this by going after musicians. Our kids, they said, were being led astray by filthy-minded, violent and occult musicians. These ancestors of Moms for Liberty crafted media spectacles and hijacked Senate hearings. They had a list of the “Filthy Fifteen” and were going after them. Their church’s values were the law and the government better censor art.
On Sept. 19, 1985, John Denver, Frank Zappa and Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider testified before a Senate Committee on the PMRC. Their statements advanced free expression, individual liberty, the free market, and the authority of families to control their own homes. Denver said, “Discipline and self-restraint, when practiced by an individual, a family, or a company is an effective way to deal with this issue. The same thing when forced on a people by their government or, worse, by a self-appointed watchdog of public morals, is suppression and will not be tolerated in a democratic society.” He might as well have been speaking in our school board meeting.
If you don’t want to read a book, don’t read it. If you don’t want your child to read a book, don’t let them. Your family chooses what your child checks out of the library and my family chooses what my child checks out of the library.
I think we’ll go read “Maus” now. It seems timely.