If You’re Gonna Attack What I Write, How’s About You Read My Book First?

I bought a service from Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA): they sent—to three-thousand media people—the press release for my book You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book? Our Hundred-Year Children’s Literature Revolution and How We’ll Keep Fighting to Defend Our Families’ Right to Read.

I received ten responses, which I gather is an acceptable number. I mailed eight review copies, and tomorrow I’ll be doing two Zoom interviews. The life of the self-published author.

One other response, however, was not sent to me, but rather came in the form of an email sent directly to IBPA. The respondent was a journalist named Greg Piper, who works for the online outlet Just The News. In his email, Mr. Piper wrote, “The SCOTUS ruling on the LGBTQ storybooks was about the refusal to notify parents and let them opt out. That’s the opposite of ‘Our Families’ Right to Read.’ You should fix your press release.”

Mr. Piper went on, the same day, to post a comment on X, which I saw when I was Googling my book. On X, he posted an image of my press release, and commented, “The IBPA press release for a new book mischaracterizes the SCOTUS ruling Mahmoud v. Taylor which did not remotely ban books for children. It blocked a policy that denied notice and opt-out to parents before kids were exposed to ‘storylines on sexuality and gender.’”

Because Greg Piper did not actually read my book, and did not reach out to me directly, perhaps I should take these two rebukes as exemplary of a tendency on his part to misrepresent opponents’ arguments? Or maybe he is simply a sloppy journalist? No, I don’t think that’s it. I found his article about Mahmoud v. Taylor, written in June. In a very thorough treatment, he quotes extensively from—and comments approvingly on—the majority opinions of Justice Alito and Justice Thomas. He then concludes by quoting from some minority dissents. Surprisingly, he doesn’t take the opportunity to directly rebut these. Maybe he doesn’t bother to rebut Justice Sotomayor when she says the majority gives "a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards" because Mr. Piper assumes his readership already disdains anything Sotomayor says? (Or, hey, maybe he doesn’t rebut Justic Sotomayor because he knows she’s RIGHT?)

OK—Greg Piper didn’t read my book, and therefore he has no business making assertions about what my book says. Am I wrong?

For instance, I never said, in my book or in my press release, that SCOTUS’s Mahmoud v. Taylor decision is “about” book-banning or is “about” “Our Families’ Right to Read.” Rather, my comments about this SCOTUS case are positioned in a carefully laid-out chapter that explains how the Religious Right has engaged in decades-long strategic maneuvering to weaken the separation of Church and State in schools, a separation that is required by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which—incidentally—does say, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or preventing the free exercise thereof.”

In my book, I state that the tactical pattern of right-wing activism aiming to weaken Church/State separation in schools is the model for the more recent right-wing practice of systematically challenging “diverse” books in school libraries.

I never say that these two streams of right-wing activism are identical. I say they are related. Part of the same larger strategy. Specifically, I say, “This current round of book-banning is part of the same long-term right-wing strategy first implemented to advance Creationism in the 1970’s. A few people—a ‘subset of parents’—confidently take on a community that doesn’t agree with them, and they succeed because they have the guidance of national organizations, and because not many people vote in school board elections.” (73)

See? The book-banners are using the same strategy pioneered by the people who’ve been working for decades to break down the wall of separation between Church and State in the schools.

In the Church/State SCOTUS case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, these two streams of right-wing activism have overlapped, since the specific LGBTQ+-positive storybooks at issue in the SCOTUS case, have also been storybooks focused on by right-wing groups carrying out school-library book-challenges.

To repeat, Mr. Piper: I never said the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision in itself is an example of bad right-wing book-banning. It is not. Mahmoud v. Taylor is about weakening the wall of separation between Church and State—which is also bad.

My book is careful. Mr. Piper should do me the service of reading what I say before he attacks my statements. I’ve made it easy: he can read the book by searching it on Google Books. It’s set up 100% readable, for free.

Because—unlike Greg Piper?—I believe in the freedom to read.