Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom & constitutional right to read especially in the classroom & is taking place now through September 24th. New data by PEN America has revealed that 41% of books banned over the past year were targeted due to LGBTQ content & highlights some of the leading organizations campaigning to ban inclusive books. The American Library Association (ALA) shows that so far in 2022 from January 1st to August 31st there have been attempts to bans at least 1,651 titles, surpassing 2021’s total of 1,597 titles banned or challenged. Sarah Kate Ellis GLAAD President & CEO stated, “Banning books is just one arm of a larger, organized campaign to target & harass LGBTQ youth nationwide. There’s no separating book bans from ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws, attacks on healthcare & sports for trans youth & the hundreds of other bills & policies that put LGBTQ youth at the center of a target built by extremist groups & politicians. Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in books & other forms of media & the targeting of LGBTQ youth through book bans & other anti-LGBTQ school policies must end.” This year’s honorary Banned Books Week chair is George M. Johnson the author of “All Boys Aren’t Blue”one of the most-targeted books for censorship nationwide. So far in 2022 state legislators have proposed at least 93 anti-LGBTQ school policy bills across numerous states. Since 1982 Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Their theme for this year’s event is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”
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