Keep Culture Wars Out Of Newtown
To the Editor:
It is understandable that the Newtown Board of Education leadership is engaged in “reputational damage control” on the front page of July 14 issue of The Newtown Bee and in a Letter to the Editor.
Republican Party culture war politics came to Newtown via the Republican-led BOE taking up challenges to two books in the Newtown High School Library, one of which was LGBTQ+ themed. It was revealed to the public late in the process of the BOE review, that the chairman of the Newtown Republican Town Committee and two other Republican town leaders were three of the ten people who challenged two books that had apparently only been checked out of the NHS library once in 15 years!
Why the sudden interest in books the students weren’t even reading? How did the challengers know to target these books? The books that were challenged are well known targets of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing group leading a national book-banning effort.
Culture war politics are designed to divide us and divide us they did.
The Newtown Bee rightly called out Moms for Liberty in an editorial in the July 7 issue for their influence here in Newtown. M4L is leading the charge nationally to get local school boards to challenge books with LGBTQ+, race and religious themes they disagree with.
About 75 percent of recent book ban efforts are against books with LGBTQ+ themes according to The Washington Post. Was BOE leadership completely unaware of the extensive national news coverage of book banning efforts sweeping the country?
Thanks to the board-appointed educators who unanimously recommended keeping the books for their educational value along with overwhelming public support for our First Amendment rights and for the rights of a vulnerable minority, the books remain in the library. Special thanks go to the courageous and passionate public support of many NHS students and to the Democrats on the BOE who stood up to the challenge.
Eventually it was decided that the books be kept in the library, but this is likely because the Republicans lost their majority position when votes were taken as the process dragged on. Ten people challenged two books — only one of which was read by one person — and the town was turned upside down.
I do hope we can learn from this and keep divisive culture war politics out of Newtown in the future.
Toni Earnshaw
Sandy Hook
Per Board Policy the Board had to hear the book challenges submitted by parents that the special review committee did not remove (as they did with Blankets.) The Board, not the special review committee, represent the voters and thus were the ones who had to receive the recommendation… but don’t let the facts get in the way of a political narrative.
This was simply backlash to the realization that the opening salvos of the culture war had been fired by the previous BOE, school administration, teachers and library ‘experts’.