I grew up in the Lehighton Area School District in rural Pennsylvania and I’m proud to call it home. However, a recent book audit to put parental restrictions on several book titles in the high school library has made me question the true intentions and motivations of our school board members.
I first heard about this audit when my close friend, Syd Vincent, wrote an OpEd for the Bucks County Beacon recounting the August 27 board meeting where the audit was discussed.
Moms for Liberty, a group that Sean Gleaves – the Lehighton school board director spearheading this book audit – is a part of, advocates against students learning about or having access to books about LGBTQ rights, race and ethnicity, and any critical engagement with our country’s history. And we can actually turn to history to examine and learn from similar instances from the past.
In Berlin in the 1920s, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institute of Sexual Knowledge where he conducted research on sexual identity, gender confirmation care, and gave a safe space to LGBTQ people. On May 6, 1933, the institution was raided and the books inside were burned. This was the first book burning in Nazi Germany issued by Adolf Hitler. And it is a warning about how conditions in a country can rapidly change.
People of the LGBTQ community have, and always will, exist. And the beginnings of Nazi Germany is a reminder of that.
Now, nobody in the district is actually asking for books to be burned or banned. However, restricting student access is still a version of censorship.
At the September 9 workshop meeting, a community member, Eddiejo Herbst read “LGBTQ Families: The Ultimate Teen Guide” and discussed how valuable of a resource it is for the library.
Later in the meeting, Sean Gleaves references Ms. Herbst’s statements and suggests that the book audit works because he had not read every book himself and we now know that some of them are appropriate, like “LGBTQ Families: The Ultimate Teen Guide.”
This is worth repeating: He has not read every book that he has targeted – if any of them.
So then, I ask, why was this book pulled off the shelf in the first place if the intention is to protect the innocence of our children? Unfortunately, I have an answer to that. I emailed the board and Sean Gleaves before the September 9 meeting expressing my disgust for the audit and questioning the validity of parental restrictions. Mr. Gleaves wrote back to me, “I am simply reviewing books that could potentially contain inappropriate content (i.e. sexually explicit depictions and/or descriptions) that is commonly found in LGBT-esque books.”
Read that again. “LGTB-esque books.” Out of the 33 books listed, 13 are relating to LGBTQ education or history.
There are severe homophobic undertones in this book audit that are simply undeniable. The board keeps passing this off as an issue of sexually explicit content but it is so clear how this audit was conceived.
I gathered responses in a Google form from over 240 individuals opposing this book audit and shared each of them with the Lehighton Area School Board.
One person wrote, “I don’t support LGBTQ+, I don’t support any of the things the books are talking about, but people need to choose for themselves and restricting books is the number one sign of autocracy.”
This is an issue of control. Personal views and opinions are leaking into what the public reads.
Some members have privately emailed me or stated publicly that, as parents, they have more concerns with sexually explicit encounters or information written inside of these books. I can understand that. But do these parents remember being in high school? I had friends experiencing pregnancy scares in middle school. Well before they ever had the opportunity to read the books in the high school library these board members so desperately want restricted. These kids don’t need books to spoil their innocence. That happens the second they step into the school hallways. Kids will talk about sex. They have access to the internet. Library books are not the root of this issue.
The Lehighton Area School board is not a model of how schools should monitor their books. Nor are the board members people their children should be looking up to. Mr. Gleaves also included these statements in his email response to me:
“You people believe you are the majority in our society because mainstream media has created this perception that you are. Unfortunately for you that is purely propaganda. The rest of us are tired of being bullied to accept your immoral and degenerate lifestyle. I will not bend the knee to you people and speak politically correct. We are tired of your lies and deception towards children. It has no place in our culture.”
To every parent reading this – I am someone’s daughter. Is this how you want an elected official to speak to your children? I spent 13 years in the Lehighton Area School District. I was elected student body president. I started my first job at 16. I am a business owner. I attend Lehigh University where I am a guest lecturer, mentor, club founder, and carry a 3.7 GPA. If I am what Mr. Gleaves deems as an immoral and degenerate person, I ask you to consider what he truly thinks of the Lehighton Area community.
This book audit has brought me to my knees overwhelmed with emotion. This is my hometown. This is the school that gave me the gift of critical thinking, research, and reading. I will not stand to see a few closed-minded people restrict what empowers student-readers through knowledge, understanding, and acceptance.
