Rep. Jones’ book ban bashes the LGBTQ community — including us lawmakers | Opinion
House Majority Leader Brenden Jones is on a mission.
His mission is not to help people of North Carolina and finally pass a budget and raise teacher pay. It is not to fund Medicaid or help people find good jobs that pay livable wages. He doesn’t seem to care about lowering the costs of healthcare coverage or housing costs.
Jones is on a mission to ban books in schools. He is on a mission to order local elected officials to Raleigh and rudely berate them as he chairs his McCarthy-style Government Operations Committee. He is on a mission to eradicate any literary references to the LGBTQ community while he childishly throws books over his shoulder and dares anyone to defy his high moral authority and legislative power.
Jones won’t be satisfied until his legislative and social media crusade ensures there is no library book that utters the words “gay, two mommies or daddies, pride, queer or transsexual.” And he engages in theatrics daring any school official in North Carolina to cross him. If they do, he will make sure school funding is cut in their districts.
According to Jones, any library book mentioning same-sex relationships, pride or parades, is “a slap in the face of every parent in their district.” He thinks all parents believe, as he apparently does, that books make you gay or that his ideology is universal and is as sacrosanct as the Ten Commandments.
If Jones real objection about books containing “filth” as he claims, he may want to go the way of Utah, where recently a school district removed the Bible from library shelves. Davis County School District removed the religious text from elementary and middle school libraries for containing “vulgarity or violence.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, the door opened for families to experience love and freedom without discrimination and indeed teach children about differences and tolerance, exactly what many of these books are about. They are not being “taught” but they are on some library shelves where children are free to ignore or check them out.
We all grew up in a time when same-sex relationships and marriage were not legal and many of us hid in “the closet” out of shame or feeling we were less than. Over time, society and norms have changed, and we are proud to be of the LGBTQ community. We love our families and friends. We respect differences and strive to be inclusive. We are lawyers, representatives of our communities and stand proudly for who we are and who we represent.
Unlike Jones, we don’t throw books, but are respectful to others we disagree with.
For Jones and a few Republican leaders to raise this culture war against our family values is a fool’s errand. The people of North Carolina have more pressing issues to worry about than a book ban gotcha campaign against our community.
State Reps. Marcia Morey of Durham, Allison Dahle of Raleigh, Deb Butler of Wilmington and state Sen. Lisa Grafstein of Wake County are Democrats..