In Texas, concerns about “censorship and intellectual freedom” were raised by a group of Katy ISD students and parents during a school board meeting on Monday, 28 February.
The Katy ISD mother, Shannon Flores, mentioned, “I am strongly opposed to removing books from Katy ISD shelves for any reason.”
Alison Franks, a junior at Jordan High School, said, “We are expected to choose our future, yet we are being denied the freedom to choose our reading material.”
Along with this, the Seven Lakes High School senior named Cameron Samuels said, “This concerning wave of censorship has malicious intent to uphold the status quo that keeps queer students and BIPOC students struggling each and every day. Censorship is not a legacy to create.”
At the duration of the 2021-2022 school year, Katy ISD has removed around nine books from the school libraries that were considered as “Pervasively vulgar”, following public outcry in the fall after the maximum number of the parents read salacious passages from some of the nine books aloud.
Flores said, “Of those nine books, five of them or 56% contain queer and nonbinary characters. What sort of message is this sending if we are bowing to pressure to remove books with queer themes?”
Superintendent Ken Gregorski addressed concerns that most of the books taken are related to the LGBTQ.
“The removal of books or any books that we have had to take off our shelves have gone through a committee process and have been deemed as pervasively vulgar. That is the only standard by which we remove books. No books are ever removed from any of our schools for content for which somebody may or may not disagree with.”
A Katy ISD mom, Claudia Turcott, mentioned, “Taxpayers should not be funding accessibility to porn for our students in the school library. It has nothing to do with LGBTQ.”
Furthermore, Franks stated, “Banning books reduces and limits knowledge that people can have, which in turn limits mindsets and empathy.”
