Seeing harm waged against Tennessee’s children, the state Republican Party has valiantly acted to neutralize this pervasive threat — that is, according to the paranoid delusions of an intolerant few. In truth, it is not real problems, such as childhood poverty, under-resourced schools or endemic gun violence, that the GOP wants to address. It is harmless books with LGBTQ+ themes that are on the right wing’s radar.
Following a mandate from Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, a Republican, 120 public libraries across the state conducted reviews of their juvenile and children’s sections to filter for content deemed inappropriate for young people.
As is typical for the “think of the children” crowd, this translates into banning or restricting books that deal with LGBTQ+ topics — or anything even perceived to be gay or out of step with gender norms by this homophobic, anti-intellectual movement.
(IN THE NEWS: Southeast Tennessee public libraries flagged 15 titles in state-directed reviews)
Throughout the 11 counties surrounding Chattanooga, seven libraries identified a list of 15 books that failed to meet this threshold of so-called “age-appropriateness,” as Hargett outlined in an October letter to public libraries across the state.