The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has been forced to release a list of 596 books it is seeking to ban in schools it operates in seven states, Guam, Puerto Rico and 11 countries.
The move came in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of military families who oppose the censorship crusade. According to the site Book Riot, these schools, run by the Department of Defense Education Activity, serve approximately 67,000 children of military families worldwide.
Not surprisingly, many of the titles on the list deal with LGBTQ+ issues. Some of them, such as Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, have been in Christian Nationalist crosshairs for years. Others appear to have been added because they have terms like “LGBTQ,” “transgender, “trans,” “equality” and “diversity” in their titles. Still others are about race or sexual health and, oddly, some are even study guides for advanced placement tests.
It’s unclear who pulled the list together, but Book Riot noted that the list has some similarities to one drawn up in 2021 by Matt Kraus, a former member of the Texas House of Representatives. Kraus had demanded that titles on it be removed from public libraries in the state.
The DOD’s list came about in response to a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump that purport to oppose “gender Ideology extremism” and “radical indoctrination” in federally funded programs. One order specifically targeted the military.
Shortly after the orders were issued, officials at the Department of Defense directed staff at department-run schools to “ensure books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology are removed from the student section.”
Many military families were outraged by the censorship and challenged the book banning in court.
“Kids on military bases have the same First Amendment rights as every other public school student – rights that their parents swore an oath to defend,” said Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Yet the administration has forced schools to remove titles like A is for Activist and Between the World and Me that reflect the vibrant and diverse world we live in. All 596 of these books must be returned to shelves immediately.”
Indeed. And now that we have the list, we know which books Christian Nationalists are coming for in your public schools and public libraries (although we should never assume this list is comprehensive – religious extremists are sure to add more). Armed with this information, our task is to defend these books – and all others – that Christian Nationalists don’t want us to read.
