Alabama Republicans May Ban Children's Book Because Author's Last Name Is 'Gay'

A public library in Alabama has put a children's book on a watch list for potential removal from libraries all because no one bothered to open the book. Instead, hard right Republicans in the state might ban the book simply because the author's last name is "Gay." The book is an illustrated children's book about siblings who build a dog house, and it contains no mentions of any of the alleged "woke" ideas that are getting books banned today. The only squabble is over the author's name, proving this is only about erasing the LGBTQ community from existence. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A public library in the state of Alabama has put a children's book, an illustrated children's book, about two siblings who build a doghouse for their pet. They've put it on a watch list, you know, to make sure it's not woke. A watch list that could lead to the book being banned because the author's last name is gay. G a y is the author's last name. The author of course is Mary, uh, Marie Louise Gay. The book is called, read Me a Story, Stella. And again, it's an illustrated book about two kids who build a doghouse. There are no mentions of sexuality, there's no mention of genders there, there, there's no adult themes to this. There's no sexually explicit content. It's, it's two kids building a doghouse. But because the author's last name is gay, it was flagged by these hard right morons in Alabama and now it's been put on a watch list.

Now the, uh, executive director of the Huntsville Madison County Public Library said, uh, it should not have been placed on the list and said that it only got swept up because the key word gay was strongly triggered by the author's last name. Obviously, we're not going to touch that book for any reason. They say, why is it still on the watch list then? And are you telling me that y'all just have an automated system where if the word gay pops up, the book is just pulled? Doesn't matter where it is, doesn't matter how it's used. If the word gay appears in any book, even as an author's last name, you just pull it. 'cause it's not about sexually explicit content, it's about the erasure of the entire L G B T Q community. That's what this is. And here is what the publicist of the book had to say, although it is obviously laughable that our picture book shows up on, on their list of censored books. Simply because the author's last name is gay. The ridiculousness of that fact should not detract from the seriousness of the situation they're using. An automated system, like I said, the word gay popped up. So the book was flagged, put on the list, the list of like, Hey, this probably needs to be removed.

And if it hadn't become a story, it probably would've been because they're not going through, they're not actually looking, they're making it easy on themselves by saying, oh, the word gaze in there, get it outta there. And again, this is not a school library, this is a public library. So their whole thing about we gotta protect the children in the schools, that's bss. This is erasure, that is what Republicans want. And that is the point that I'm going to continue hammering as long as we have to talk about these issues.

Because it's not because they don't want children to see sexualized material. If they did, they would be writing letters to every single TV network on the planet telling them to cease immediately, all production, because children are exposed to sexualized content every single day on tv, on social media, it's everywhere. But they're targeting these books because they know one, that's the easiest place they can go. And two, because it's not about the sexual content at all. It's about trying to erase the entire L G B T Q community from existence.