Hannah Beier

How Christian groups helped parents pull books from some Pennsylvania school libraries

This story I pitched, published in Reuters, features my photography, video, and reporting on the controversies unfolding in the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania. Writer Jonathan Allen expands on the broader national effort nurtured by Christian conservative groups to expand parents' direct control over what school staff can share with their children, particularly on matters of sex, identity, and race.

On May 12, the library coordinator for Pennsylvania's Central Bucks School District sent an email to colleagues that some conservative parents and Christian advocacy groups had long prayed to see. The email instructed school library staff to remove all copies of two books within 24 hours: "Gender Queer", by Maia Kobabe and "This Book is Gay" by Juno Dawson. They were being removed under a new book-challenge policy enacted last July by the Republican majority on the school district's board of directors after a series of grueling public meetings that have divided the wealthy district north of Philadelphia. Under the policy, a parent can challenge a book in a school library if it depicts implied or actual nudity or "sexual acts" and a committee of district staff then reviews it. "What Bucks County has become is really this microcosm of the division that we see across the country, where people on both sides are so sure that they're right," said Tabitha Dell'Angelo, one of the three Democrats on the school board who voted against the policy. The book-challenge policy became part of a broader complaint by the families of LGBT students in Central Bucks of a "hostile educational environment," compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. The complaint has triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. "Some books do contain depictions of sex, but I think that's just an accurate portrayal of teenagers and adults," said Leo Burchell, an 18-year-old transgender student who graduated this month from a district high school. "Banning those books that are about sex or about nudity or about rape is not going to stop it from happening."