The tension is palpable as the San Ramon Valley Unified School District board members prepare to discuss on Tuesday the controversial idea of banning books. As seen increasingly across the nation, …
The tension is palpable as the San Ramon Valley Unified School District board members prepare to discuss on Tuesday the controversial idea of banning books. As seen increasingly across the nation, certain books dealing with race and LGBTQ+ topics have sparked passionate debate among students, parents and community members.
“Parents are doing this because they are scared of the change between their generation and ours,” said Mitali Mittal, a senior at Dougherty Valley High School where Principal Evan Powell recently rejected an attempt to ban the book “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe from the school library. The board is also expected to discuss books such as “Push” and “Lawn Boy,” which some parents allege on social media contain “highly explicit sexual content involving incest and pedophilia.”Book banning in California, as in other parts of the United States, is rare and often controversial. In general, California has a reputation for being progressive on free speech and individual rights, including the right to read and express oneself without censorship or government interference.
“The thing about having LGBTQ kids is they don’t always feel safe being out in public,” said the mother, adding that in recent years the San Ramon Valley Unified community “has been a very unsafe space for LGBTQ+ families.” In recent years, there has been a growing trend among certain groups to try and ban books from schools, maintaining that they are inappropriate or offensive.
San Ramon Valley High School’s one copy of “Gender Queer” was placed in the library in October 2020 and has only been checked out twice, the district confirmed. “Gender Queer” is still available at many Bay Area school libraries, including high schools within the Oakland, Berkeley, and Fremont unified school districts. It is also in two other high schools within San Ramon Valley Unified, with one copy in each school’s library.
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