In November 2020, Washington held the nation's first-ever state referendum on sex education. By a nearly 60% to 40% plurality, voters in the Evergreen State approved a set of guidelines that include information about contraception, LGBTQ identities and sexual consent. But the guidelines also allow parents to opt out of the subject if they don't want their kids to study it at school.
That seems like a good compromise to me. Most Americans want their children to receive comprehensive sex education, which shouldn't be blocked simply because a minority of families rejects it. At the same time, though, these dissenters shouldn't be forced to undergo instruction that they deem inappropriate or immoral.
So why can't we forge a similar truce around banned books?
I'm talking about works such as Maia Kobabe's memoir, "Gender Queer" — which has been banned in 41 school districts — and "The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison, which 22 districts have banned. According to a report released this month by PEN America, an eye-popping 1,648 books have been banned over the past year in 138 school districts in 32 states.
Sometimes, these books are prohibited outright from inclusion in school libraries, classrooms or curricula. Others are placed in a restricted section of a library, counseling center or resource room. But the larger goal is always the same: to limit the number of children who can encounter the books because somebody disapproves of them.
That's exactly backward. Parents who object to a book should have the right to prevent their own kids from reading it, just as they can opt out of sex education. But they have no right — none — to keep it out of the hands of other children.
And that's what they're trying to do. Consider the Gardner Edgerton School District 231 in Kansas, where a group of parents demanded the removal of Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" from the high school English curriculum.
Asked whether she would prohibit her own children from reading Alexie's book, one of the objecting parents said that wasn't the point. "It's not about them necessarily individually," she said. "It's about ... all the kids in the district. ... Kids should not be reading this information or these words." She cited sexual themes in the book.