I had quite forgotten that the Republican kooks in Granbury are bigots. 7 years ago Hood County bigots tried to get LGBTQ books removed from the public library; they were stopped because there were more sensible Americans fighting this.
This last couple of years Texas Legislaor Matt Krause took up the Bigot torch. From 2021
After demanding that Texas schools report whether they have some 800 books about racism, gender and sexuality on their shelves, Fort Worth state Rep. Matt Krause is refusing to give details about how he generated the list and what could happen to districts that carry the titles.
The Republican lawmaker also won’t share whether outside political, religious or parent groups influenced the investigation he launched two weeks ago.
Krause is also a speaker for WallBuilders, a conservative group founded by GOP activist David Barton that pushes a Christian-centered version of America’s founding that historians reject. The group puts on an annual “Teacher Conference” in Texas catered toward conservative educators that shows them how to defend against “modern attacks on America and American History.”
“They are an organization that is feeding history mixed with politics,” said John Fea, a professor at Pennsylvania’s Messiah University.
These intrusive christians should be told to MYOB instead of doing the UnAmerican activity of banning books.
And, as Christopher Tackett, quoted in the following article notes, it was because of a small group of activities “whose aim was to introduce more religion in schools”. Let’s call it Christian Nationalism, such as the type Stonewater Church practices. But some students at Granbury ISD fought back, including Lou Whiting.
Whiting, who was a junior at the time, saw the bans as an attack on the entire LGBT+ community. For them, it wasn’t just about books, but about their very existence.
“They were trying to erase us,” Whiting tells The Independent. “The first step ever taken throughout history when it comes to genocide is lack of representation. You take away what they can give to other communities, you take away the literature, you take away art, you take away representation of culture, and then it moves on to the next step, and the next one and the next one.”
Here was Jeremy Glenn, superintend of GISD, showing, as ACLU realized that the bans appeared to be about targeting a particular community
And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” he said, according to the recording. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”
He went on to say that Granbury “is a very very conservative community. And our board is very conservative,” and that “if it is not what you believe, you better hide it. Because it ain’t changing in Granbury.”
From a complaint ACLU sent to the US Dept of Education in 2022
Books that Granbury ISD removed from district libraries, as provided by the district in an open records request,10 included books about LGBTQ+ inclusion such as (examples only):
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz • Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, by Jazz Jennings
• In Our Mothers’ House, by Patricia Polacco
• Queer, There and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World, by Sarah Prager
Following significant public pressure and a letter from our organization and partners regarding the illegality of removals, Granbury ISD eventually returned the majority of books to
the shelves. However, two of the three books ultimately selected for removal from Granbury ISD libraries via a committee review process were books about LGBTQ+ themes. One of them, This Book Is Gay, was the book specifically mentioned by Superintendent Glenn in his remarks to librarians about book removals.11 Moreover, the effects of the book removals continue to reverberate through the district….The message sent to Granbury ISD students by the book removals and by the superintendent’s comments remains clear: Granbury is “a very, very conservative community” in
which LGBTQ+ children and teenagers who do not conform had “better hide it.” Further, Superintendent Glenn and Granbury ISD leadership have never directly repudiated the
superintendent’s denial of the existence of transgender and non-binary individuals. LGBTQ+ students in Granbury ISD, particularly transgender and non-binary students, plainly face discrimination in the district. The superintendent himself has made very public anti-LGBTQ+ remarks, linking them to the beliefs of the school board. And the school district has acted upon that rhetoric and those beliefs to purge representations of LGBTQ+ identity from district shelves. As one Texas student recently stated, “As I’ve struggled with my own identity as a queer person, it’s been really, really important to me that I have access to these books. And I’m sure it’s really important to other queer kids. You should be able to see yourself reflected on the page.” 12
Federal law bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, as Department of Education guidance recognizes.13 President Biden’s March 2021 executive order on guaranteeing an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including sexual orientation or gender identity, clarifies that it is administration policy “that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex . . . including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”14 The Department of Education recognizes that, under Supreme Court precedent, “the best reading of
Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ is that it includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”15
Superintendent Glenn’s comments and the resultant purge of LGBTQ+ books from library shelves by district employees plainly were discriminatory acts and create a pervasively
hostile atmosphere for LGBTQ+ students in Granbury ISD. The ACLU of Texas requests that the Department of Education investigate Granbury ISD for Title IX violations due to Superintendent Glenn’s anti-LGBTQ+ remarks and the ensuing purge of books related to LGBTQ+ characters and themes from Granbury shelves.
If the district is found to be violating discrimination laws, it would likely lead to lawsuits and would impact all school districts that have enacted similar book bans.
