Submitted by Jackie Homan, Riverside
Greenwich RTM Member Karsten Vagner’s recent Op Ed entitled “A Wish on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility” took a swipe at Republicans for targeting librarians instead of “military-style weapons.”
The sentiment that Republicans are promoting “book bans” and “targeting librarians” is factually incorrect and intentionally misleading. In my personal experience, many of the people pushing false narratives about “book banning” have not actually looked at the content that is being flagged, either.
But once they look at the content, they know it is indefensible.
Even GPS Director of School Safety Services, Thomas Bobkowski, agrees with this sentiment, and was captured on video telling me that images I brought from my own children’s homework were too offensive to be publicly displayed at a BOE meeting.
Can you imagine that?
How can a book be considered too offensive for parents, but suitable for our children?
A recent article from The Daily Signal offers more examples of controversial books based on a complaint filed in Virginia:
“All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto” includes a detailed scene in which the author (age 13) is molested, both receiving and giving oral sex to his cousin (age 17 or 18). The author also describes several other obscene sexual scenes.
“America” contains several disturbing scenes in which the 15-year-old main character is raped, describes his erections and how excited he gets by seeing both boys and girls naked, and relishes how no one can stop him from imagining rape.
“The Bluest Eye” contains several instances of characters fantasizing and experiencing incest, rape, and pedophilia. Morrison spends considerable time with many scenes intimately describing sex with children.
I was surprised to learn that 13 out of 14 books highlighted in that article were available in GPS, all except Dime by E.R. Frank.I encourage parents to review the complete book challenge documentation that was used in the complaint to the Virginia school. You might just be shocked to see some of the content freely available to your children inside Greenwich schools!
Just like BOE members, Superintendent Toni Jones and GEA President Lilliane Perone were shocked by images I showed them from other graphic books found in the library. So shocked that the book Fun Home was immediately pulled off the shelves, and a book review committee was established to review other flagged books.
But the real question is…
How many books about oral sex, pedophilia and rape fantasies should Greenwich maintain in the school library anyway?