Oregon passes law stopping schools from banning books just because LGBTQ+ people wrote them

Oregon’s House of Representatives has passed a bill this week to prevent anti-LGBTQ+ book bans in schools, and it is now headed to the state’s openly lesbian governor, Tina Kotek (D), who is anticipated to sign it into law.

As reported by the Oregon Capital Chronicle, Senate Bill 1098 aims to stop banning books or materials in school and classroom libraries just because they “include a perspective, study or story of, or are created by, any individual or group against whom discrimination is prohibited under” the state’s anti-discrimination in education law. This encompasses books by and about LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and people of colour.

According to ‘LGBTQ Nation’, the bill permits the removal of books from schools, but it outlines specific procedures for doing so. Parents or guardians must submit a formal written request to challenge a book, and a committee from the school or district must verify that the challenge was not due to the book’s portrayal of or authorship by members of a protected class under Oregon’s anti-discrimination in education law. This committee is also required to provide a public written explanation before any book is removed from a school library.

S.B. 1098 also covers school textbooks, mandating that they “adequately address the roles in and contributions to the economic, political and social development of Oregon and the United States by” men and women of color, people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other protected classes.

The bill, which was approved by the state Senate in March, passed the Oregon House of Representatives on Monday with a 34-21 vote. State Rep. Cyrus Javadi, the sole Republican supporting the bill, spoke about how reading helped her gay son understand his identity.

“You can remove a book if the content is too graphic,” Javadi explained, according to the Capital Chronicle. “You can remove it if it’s not age-appropriate, but you can’t remove it just because the author is gay or Muslim or Black or because the story centers someone that makes you uncomfortable.”

“Let’s not teach our kids that their stories are too controversial to belong on the shelf,” Javadi emphasised.

Oregon now joins other states in passing legislation to counter the trend of book bans, which primarily target titles by and about LGBTQ+ individuals and people of colour. While Republican legislators in states like Idaho, Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas have passed laws to ban books, states such as Colorado, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington have enacted similar measures to Oregon’s.

As per the Capital Chronicle, 151 books were challenged in the state last year, marking the highest number since the Oregon State Library began monitoring challenges in 1987.