TX: Far Right Book Banning In Action

Steve Bannon was one of the Trumpers to start arguing that school boards needed to be targeted, and he soon found a partner in Patriot Mobile, a mobile phone company with a christianist nationalist bent ("America's only Christian conservative wireless provider"). They're headed by Glenn Story, a CPA on a mission, that in recent years has veered more toward Dominionism and the Seven Mountains, which are all about how Christians are supposed to take over the rule of society, both in government and culture (one such group once gave Betsy DeVos an award).

Patriot takes millions of dollars and pumps it into far-right causes, and Story decided that they would like to follow Bannon's lead and grab themselves some school boards in Texas. Bannon and Story put on a little show in August for attenders of CPAC.

“The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Bannon said during an interview with Patriot Mobile’s president, Glenn Story, from the floor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Dallas on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”

Story turned to the camera and said, “We went out and found 11 candidates last cycle and we supported them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

“Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Bannon shouted as a crowd of CPAC attendees erupted in applause.

The districts were in Southlake, Keller, Grapevine, and Mansfield.

Southlake we've visited before. It's in Southlake's Carroll Independent School District that an administrator suggested that a book about the Holocaust should be balanced by a book representing the other side. They leaped right on the book banning rubric bandwagon, and all this after several years of trying, sort of, to address local issues with racism. 

Carroll is also the district where Patriot moved to take advantage of a boneheaded Texas law requiring schools to put up any "In God We Trust" posters that were donated. So Patriot donated a bunch, and so did some other folks who put the text in Arabic and with gay pride colors. 

Keller Independent School District also did their new owners proud by going after a bunch of books, including an Anne Frank adaptation and the Bible. But back then the district was still hewing to the notion that these books included divisive concepts or sexual content.

Now, it seems, the Keller school board isn't even trying to pretend that there's any principle involved here except bigotry and bias.

Joni Shaw Smith, a Moms for Liberty board member, said she was concerned about some of the books on the new acquisition list. Which matters because now the Keller board must approve any and all books purchased. 

The board already had a strict list of limitations on books, but this week they extended it to include "discussion or depiction of gender fluidity" at all. Not a depiction that involves depiction of nudity or sex acts. Just any depiction at all. As Bookriot points out, that forbids any mention of trans persons as well. 

Lots of folks had lots of things to say about this, but the award for most unintentionally hilarious comment comes from another Texas politician who attended the meeting:

“You promised to defend our kids, you promised to put education above indoctrination. … That’s what you’re doing tonight,” said Nate Schatzline, who recently won a seat in the Texas House.

“You have put no political beliefs inside of this,” he added, which drew laughs from some in the audience.

Indeed. 

It's all worth paying attention to because in this move, the mask has slipped. This far right crowd may try to get their feet in doors by making noise about the innocence of children and graphic sex and shocking depictions, but here's the endgame for many--to simply erase LGBTQ persons from sight. And not just for their own children, but for all children. It is not Texas's finest hour. I sure miss old fashioned actual conservatives who believed in actual freedom and not the suppression of every piece of human existence with which they disagreed.