President Biden criticizes Republican politicians efforts to ban LGBTQ books

 

U.S. President Joe Biden criticized elected Republican officials for the increasingly widespread practice of banning LGBTQ books from America’s schools and libraries.

Addressing an audience for the Council of Chief State School Officers’ Teachers of the Year event, the president said, “Empty shelves don’t help kids learn very much,” adding, “I’ve never met a parent who wants a politician dictating what their kid can learn, and what they can think, or who they can be.”

Each attempt to ban a book by them represents a direct attack on every person’s right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore, and to suppress the voices of LGBTQ community.

Explicitly targeting these materials for censorship are elected officials like Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his conservative allies in the state legislature, who last week expanded the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law, which President Biden has called “hateful.”