Does a book challenge constitute discrimination? A bill in the Oregon Legislature offers an answer

Most challenged books in Oregon have LGBTQ themes or authors; proposed legislation would make it illegal to censor books about protected classes.
Attempts to ban books are at record highs in Oregon, mirroring national statistics. The vast majority are written by authors who identify as LGBTQ, or belong to a racial or ethnic minority, or tell stories representing the experiences of people from those groups. Photo by: Redd Francisco on Unsplash

“There was no discrimination.”

That was the curt comment of a Tillamook School Board member, during the board’s Oct. 14 meeting, in response to a discrimination complaint filed against the school district.

The complaint was filed “from a patron,” according to board documents, and alleged that the Tillamook School Board’s vote in August to remove How the García Girls Lost Their Accents from the curriculum of Tillamook High School’s 10th-grade English honors class constituted a discriminatory act.

The discrimination complaint requested that the board reverse the book removal, as well as requested a review of the school district’s policies related to complaints regarding curriculum, “policies on students’ right to study complex and controversial issues,” and recommended that the school board receive diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) training.

The school board’s vote would determine whether the board would accept the complaint and its recommendations, or reject it.

Discussion lasted five minutes before the board voted in favor of rejecting the complaint. The book remains off the curriculum. 

Attempts to ban books — such as the Tillamook School Board’s vote to remove How the García Girls Lost Their Accents from classroom curriculum — are at record highs in Oregon, mirroring national statistics. When it comes to what sort of books face censorship, a clear pattern has emerged: The vast majority are written by authors who identify as LGBTQ, or belong to a racial or ethnic minority, or tell stories representing the lived experiences of people from those groups.

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Book bans possibly fueled by discrimination may only get worse with the incoming presidential administration and a “presidential transition project” — otherwise known as Project 2025.


FREEDOM TO READ: Library book bans in Oregon
Third of three parts


Project 2025 — the political blueprint for reshaping federal government, including strengthening and consolidating power in the executive branch, published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank — does not explicitly advocate for banning books. Its website pointed that out after initial public backlash: “Project 2025 … does not advocate for banning books.”

That said, the plan advocates for policies that facilitate book bans — specifically books by or about LGBTQ people. The foreword reads: “…children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” 

Project 2025 calls for labeling any book with LGBTQ content as “pornography,” then making it illegal, which would effectively ban those books.

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“Pornography should be outlawed,” Project 2025 reads. “The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned” — thus referencing authors and publishers — and goes on: “Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”

The reasons people request book bans run the gamut, arguing that the books contain sex and nudity, depict mental distress, violence, or abuse, include profanity, and are “unsuited to the age group.”

Very few explicitly state the reason is that the book is LGBTQ, or about a minority population. 

“The reason why people say they’re challenging material may or may not be the actual reason why they’re challenging the material,” Buzzy Nielsen, a program manager at the State Library of Oregon, said.  “People do not come out and say they are homophobic.”

It still raises the question: Are attempts to ban those books, at heart, driven by homophobia, racism, and discrimination?

A bill the Oregon Legislature will consider next year would put a stop to that.

Data collected by the State Library of Oregon show that LGBTQ books constituted 66 percent of the challenges in libraries during the last fiscal year. Graphic courtesy: State Library of Oregon, OIFC 2024 Report

LGBTQ BOOKS ARE MOST CHALLENGED

Each year, the American Library Association publishes a top-10 list of the most challenged books in the country. Of the books on its 2023 list, seven are written by, tell stories about, or include characters who are LGBTQ. The top three are Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir Gender Queer; George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, and Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay.

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In Oregon, data collected by the State Library of Oregon show that LGBTQ books constituted 66 percent of the 63 book challenges in public, school, and academic libraries in the fiscal year between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024. The year before, the number was 41 percent. 

“There is a higher percentage of books with queer content challenged this year,” Nielsen said. “This year was even more stark than last year.”

In Oregon, the three most challenged books were Beyond Magenta, Flamer, and Heartstopper Volume 1 — all of which are LGBTQ content. Beyond Magenta and Flamer each were challenged four times; Heartstopper Volume 1 was challenged three times.

Neilsen points out that “challenges are not equally distributed among the different sections or different topics a library covers.  They are not equally distributed among the people who write the books or for whom the books are intended, either.”

“That is not an accident,” Nielsen said. “There is no way that this type of pattern just naturally emerges.”

The numbers speak for themselves.

A PATTERN EMERGES

A recent study by six graduate students in the University of Washington’s Information School analyzed the language people use in formal book challenges. (The first step in an attempt to ban or restrict access to a library book is to file a challenge.)

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The study’s data set included all of the challenge reports from Oregon’s libraries between 2013-23, which are maintained by the State Library of Oregon.

In 2023, the study found, “inappropriateness for children” maintained its top spot in book challenges. Whether a certain book is appropriate for children to read is a perennial reason for book challenges.

But the study found that another reason tied, for the first time, for the top spot: that the book’s content was LGBTQ. Generally, the study found increased rhetoric regarding books that contain LGBTQ themes and racial issues. 

While drafting the State Library’s most recent challenge report, Nielsen and his colleagues analyzed historic challenge reports, wondering if any patterns could be found in other years that saw a high number of book challenges. 

Book challenges ebb and flow with political and social events. Challenges spiked during World War I and World War II, as well as during the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, when books about various religious practices and magic faced censorship (the Harry Potter books are among the most frequently challenged books in recent years).  

Nielsen and his colleagues discovered that high numbers of book challenges occurred in 1992-93 and 2000-01. Those years also saw some of the most contentious ballot measures in Oregon history.

The November 1992 general election included Measure 9, which would have amended Oregon’s Constitution “to require that all governments discourage homosexuality,” and declare homosexuality to be “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse.”

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That measure, in particular, galvanized Oregon’s progressive community and is largely credited with launching Oregon’s gay rights movement. Fred Stickel, The Oregonian’s long-time publisher at the time, made headlines of his own when he decided to run an editorial encouraging Oregonians to vote no, which he signed and printed on the paper’s front page. 

“I speak out now because Measure 9 is also unprecedented — an assault on human rights and human dignity that should have no place in the Oregon Constitution,” he wrote. The measure was defeated by 56 percent of Oregon voters.

That year, 44 percent of challenges concerned books with LGBTQ subject matter.

In 2000, two anti-LGBTQ ballot measures were defeated by Oregon voters in the general election. Measure 87 would have allowed the regulation and zoning of “sexually oriented businesses,” including strip clubs and sex shops.

Another measure — also known as Measure 9 —  would have prohibited Oregon’s public schools from teaching anything “encouraging, promoting, or sanctioning homosexual, bisexual behaviors.” The measure failed by 53 percent.

That year, the State Library documented 41 percent of challenges directed at LGBTQ books.

“The pattern evident in 1992 and 2000 continues in this year’s data,” the State Library’s 2024 report concluded. “If anything, the trend is possibly accelerating.”

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Book challenges ebb and flow with political and social events. Anti-LGBTQ measures on Oregon ballots in 1992 and 2000 coincided with a rise in challenges. The state has seen a dramatic rise in the past four years as the culture wars surrounding gay and transgender rights, racial justice, and women’s rights have heated up. Graphic courtesy: State Library of Oregon, OIFC 2024 Report

MARGINALIZED POPULATIONS ARE PROTECTED CLASSES 

The State Library’s report noted another pattern: The people represented in the most commonly challenged books belong to a protected class under Oregon law.

“No matter the stated reason for a challenge,” the report reads, “one pattern is clear: challenged materials are disproportionately about, by, or center the stories of individuals who belong to a protected class under Oregon law.” 

Protected classes are groups protected by law from illegal discrimination that is rooted in a characteristic of that group. Oregon’s protected classes include race, color, national origin, religion, disability, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and marital status.

The State Library’s report found that 87 percent of all challenges involved protected classes. And, 93 percent of the books that were banned in Oregon last year — mostly in school libraries — are books about people belonging to a protected class.

Those stark numbers raise the question: Is a book challenge a bias crime?

“Given their disproportionate impact on protected classes,” the State Library’s challenge report reads, “challenges may also qualify as bias crimes or incidents as defined by DOJ [the Oregon Department of Justice].”

Hate crimes and bias incidents refer to crimes and non-criminal acts that are motivated by animosity toward a person’s membership in a protected class. Oregon’s Department of Justice defines a hate crime as “a crime motivated in part or whole by bias against another person’s actual or perceived protected class,” while a bias incident is “a non-criminal hostile expression motivated in part or whole by another person’s actual or perceived protected class.” 

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Some parents do not want their children to read certain books, for a variety of reasons, including ones based in religion. One rationale could be “‘I just don’t want kids to be exposed to queer content,’” Nielsen said. “What do you do if the reason [for a book challenge] is that a parent or person doesn’t feel like people under 18 should be exposed to any kind of queer content, period?”

Sen. Lew Frederick (D-Portland) wants to pass a piece of legislation that would make that illegal.

LEGISLATION WOULD PROHIBIT DISCRIMINATORY BANS

During the 2023-24 legislative session earlier this year, Frederick was the chief sponsor of Senate Bill 1583, which would have prohibited school boards, administrators, and other people involved in designing school curriculum and school libraries from banning or censoring “a book or materials on the basis that the book or material includes a perspective, study or story of, or is created by, any individual or group against whom discrimination is prohibited under” Oregon law.

The bill attracted written testimony from 500 people, more than any other bill, with comments split evenly between supporters and opponents. The Senate passed the bill in a 17-12 vote.

But the bill died in the last hours of the legislative session, when the Oregon Legislature adjourned days earlier than expected.

Frederick — who was the recipient of the Oregon Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom award earlier this year — has re-introduced the legislation and said, in an interview with Oregon ArtsWatch, that it is one of his priorities in the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.

“The idea of somehow telling someone what they’re supposed to read makes no sense to me,” said Frederick, who said books and reading were a “very basic part of my life and always have been.” 

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It is one thing, he pointed out, for people to disagree with a book’s content, or criticize a book. But he draws a line at the idea of someone deciding what other people can read.  “A book is not being forced on anyone,” he said.

Noting the social and political uncertainty, both nationally and around the world, Frederick said, “I want kids to be as knowledgeable of the world around them as possible.”

“In a democratic society,” he continued, “you want to learn as much as possible about as many people as possible, so we can have a better society and a better world.” 

***

Part 1: As efforts to ban books in Oregon libraries increase, library patrons and supporters are pushing back
Part 2: Book bans and unintended consequences

Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist and writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Bklyner, The Brooklyn Rail, InvestigateWest, The Oregonian, the Portland Tribune, Oregon Humanities, and many others. She has been a fellow and writer-in-residence at the Logan Nonfiction Program, the Banff Centre’s Literary Journalism program, Alderworks Alaska, and the Sou’wester Artist Residency Program.

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