Copy Block: The hateful tune remains the same

Does Anita Bryant receive royalty checks when today's group of concerned adults sing from her anti-queer song book?

The singer's "Save Our Children" campaign in the 1970s successfully repealed an anti-discrimination ordinance in Miami-Dade County, Fla., by playing on stereotypes about gay people and accusing them of being predators out to recruit children.

Conservatives are singing the same tune today, but now they use the term "grooming" instead of "recruiting" and attack public libraries for having books with LGBTQ+ themes. They're desperate to roll back hard-won progress and return this country to a 1950s vision of "Leave it to Beaver" where married couples sleep in twin beds, the patriarchy is never questioned, and women and minorities "know their place."

West Virginia's population losses have cost us a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Charleston's strategy for fixing it is making the state even more unwelcome to anyone who isn't an old straight white man. It's no surprise to me when teens graduate and put this state behind them.

Wood County's latest kerfuffle centers around the availability at local libraries of Maia Kobabe's critically acclaimed "Gender Queer: A Memoir."

If you haven't read it -- the people trying to get it banned certainly haven't -- the author is nonbinary and uses the graphic novel format to talk about what it was like for them growing up, not feeling at home in either gender or even being able to put words to their feelings.

During Tuesday's Parkersburg City Council meeting's public forum, a woman named Jessica Rowley declared the book obscene and fired up the band for another chorus of "Protect our children."

Council member Sharon Kuhl said she was sickened by the book and would likely vote against the library renewal levy.

"Gender Queer" is not obscene. It weathered a recent court challenge in Virginia Beach by conservatives who waved around a few illustrations from the book they found distasteful and declared the book shouldn't be in libraries or sold at Barnes & Noble.

Thankfully, the court decided against them and made it clear context matters.

I can tell you Stephen King's latest bestseller "Fairy Tale" contains 120 F-bombs, but that won't tell you anything about the story or themes of the book. At best, you might think I need a better hobby.

I read "Gender Queer" after my sister's oldest child came out as nonbinary and I wanted a better understanding of what they're going through. I've been an out gay man my entire adult life, but I'd never given much thought to what it meant to be nonbinary.

Most of the early part of "Gender Queer" is Kobabe's struggle just putting words to something for which they had no frame of reference.

Being a closeted gay high school student in rural West Virginia in the early 1990s, I could relate. Books were how I realized what my sexuality was and what it could mean for my own happiness to stop hiding.

When I came out to my parents in college, my dad already knew. He'd seen the books on my shelf and worked it out. He accepted me and never stopped loving me. I've had friends who were not so lucky.

Libraries are meant to serve everyone. They share stories and ideas that challenge us or comfort us or sometimes make us hopping mad. They're not here to enforce one narrow view of what it means to be human. They're not here to enforce conformity.

Targeting books like "Gender Queer" will not stop people from being nonbinary.

Targeting books like Shaun David Hutchinson's "The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza" won't stop people from being gay or bisexual.

Targeting books like Tobly McSmith's "Stay Gold" won't stop them from being transgender.

These challenges can only make life harder for queer people to see themselves and their experiences reflected in works that tell them "Hey, there's nothing wrong with you." These challenges may make it harder for their relatives or loved ones to gain understanding and greater empathy.

And that's the goal, isn't it? This isn't about "protecting children." This is about protecting adults who see the world changing around them and don't like it. They'd rather have no libraries at all than let a queer kid understand that things get better when you realize some adults may not be worth listening to.

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Terry L Estep is News Editor for the Parkersburg News and Sentinel.