Hustler USA – September 2023
English | 72 pages | pdf | 178.47 MB
Equal Rights for ALl
The ACLU is currently tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. Twice the number of such bills have been introduced so far this year as were introduced in all of 2022-and ten times as many as just five years ago, in 2018. Included are bills to ban access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth, legislation regulating curriculum in public schools-and of course anti-drag bills are now all the rage in GOP-led state legislatures. In fact, participate in a couple “adult cabaret performances” in public in Tennessee, and you could be slapped with a felony charge punishable by up to six years in prison. Efforts by a very vocal minority to enforce an extremely narrow definition of “morality” have spread unchecked, from legislation to book-banning.
PEN America, a nonprofit working to defend free expression in literature, keeps a running tally of titles banned from libraries and classrooms across America and points out that 26% of the books banned in the 2022-23 school year had LGBTQ characters or themes. These books are sometimes even labeled as “pornographic” or “indecent.”
PEN notes, “As book bans escalate, coupled with the proliferation of legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history and LGBTQ+ identities, the freedom to read, learn and think continues to be undermined for students.”
Equal rights and freedom of speech were of paramount importance to my husband. Larry used to say, “When Hitler first came to power, before he started exterminating the Jews, censorship was at the top of his agenda,” and, “Free speech: We’ve had it so long, we take it for granted. People don’t realize it can be lost. It doesn’t happen all at once; it happens magazine by magazine and movie by movie”-and book by book.
You might think I am being alarmist, but you would be wrong. Sure, all of the titles banned from our classrooms might only represent a fraction of the total books available, but freedom of speech means nothing if our rights to read and learn are censored.
And all of the 491 bills mentioned in the first paragraph might not become law, but they do reflect an incredibly dangerous trend that harms both the LGBTQ community and every American’s fundamental right to be treated equally.
Liz Flynt Publisher
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