VA Republicans Endorse Calls To Ban Books In Bid To Win Back Political Power

VIRGINIA — With the Virginia governor's election less than a month away, Republicans have latched onto a new public schools-related issue as a way to energize enough voters to win their first statewide office since 2010, a political analyst said.

Early in 2021, conservative groups attacked public school districts for refusing to adopt full-time, in-person learning for students during the coronavirus pandemic. That was followed by a crusade against an obscure academic movement called Critical Race Theory.

In recent months, Virginia conservatives have embraced book banning in public schools as their new cause. The campaign of Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor, is attempting to use community anger over certain books circulating in high school libraries to boost support for his campaign.

After a Sept. 23 Fairfax County School Board meeting, Youngkin’s campaign team quickly produced a political advertisement that included footage of community members at the meeting calling for the removal of books from high school libraries in the county. The advertisement also highlighted Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe's statement at the final gubernatorial debate that "parents should not be telling schools what they should teach."

The conservative groups' attacks on the books is part of a broader strategy of the Republican Party in recent years "to focus on cultural wedge issues as a way to undermine the support of voters who might be on the fence about supporting Democratic candidates, like McAuliffe," Alex Keena, assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, told Patch.

A previous generation of the Republican Party focused more on business and economic issues, and the party sought out candidates like Youngkin for their business acumen, Keena said.

"But beginning with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, Republican politicians have increasingly focused on polarizing social issues as a way to energize their insular base of supporters and raise campaign money," Keena said.

The Youngkin campaign hopes voter turnout will be low among Democrats and that by zeroing in on issues related to school policies and curriculums, it will convince enough suburban voters to switch their allegiance to the Republican candidate, political watchers said.

A survey of likely voters released last Friday by Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Civic Leadership shows McAuliffe leading Youngkin 49 percent to 45 percent, falling within the poll’s margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.

Republican Culture Wars

In recent years, book banning at public schools and libraries has been a tactic of both liberals and conservatives. Books by Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, John Steinbeck and Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” have been targeted for removal by people who complain these books represent yet another microaggression against historically marginalized communities.

In Virginia, though, Republicans are turning the call for the banning of books in schools into a political rallying cry in this year's statewide elections.

Conservative groups, for example, are calling for the removal of several books on high school library shelves that describe sexual acts between people of the same sex. In Fairfax County, the attacks on books with depictions of sexual acts is coinciding with a campaign against an openly gay member of the Fairfax County School Board.

In a political advertisement, Yougkin included footage of Stacy Langton, a parent of a Fairfax High School student, and Adrienne Henzel, a former Fairfax County Public Schools teacher, speaking out against LGBTQ-oriented books at the Sept. 23 school board meeting.

Youngkin's campaign used footage of Langton calling on Fairfax County Public Schools to remove two books from high school libraries. “Both of these books include pedophilia,” Langton said.

SEE ALSO: LGBTQ-Themed Books Removed From Fairfax County HS Libraries

The two books cited by Langton at the school board meeting were "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe and "Lawn Boy" by Jonathan Evison.

Evison's "Lawn Boy" includes passages where the protagonist of the novel recalls engaging in oral sex with a fellow 10-year-old when they were in fourth grade. A Patch editor read the novel and found it does not include any depictions of adults engaging in sex with minors.

In "Gender Queer," Kobabe describes fantasizing about sex as a teenager by using Plato's "Symposium," a philosophical text, as a theme in those fantasies.

Within this context, Kobabe includes an illustration of a man and what appears to be a teenage male from Ancient Greece. In an attempt at self-arousal, Kobabe developed an "elaborate fantasy based on Plato's Symposium." In classical antiquity, writers such as Plato and others explored aspects of homosexuality in Greece.

At the same time, Langton has been pushing for the resignation of Fairfax County School Board member Karl Frisch (Providence District), who is openly gay.

Langton also spoke at the Sept. 28 Fairfax City Council meeting about the books. In her comments, Langton said she was only trying to keep pornographic materials out of school libraries.

In her comments at the Sept. 23 school board meeting, Henzel said Evison’s book includes a passage where “one adult male character graphically describes engaging in fellatio with male minors.”

The scene described by Henzel does not include any description of an adult male engaging in oral sex with a minor, according to a Patch editor's review of the book.

"There is absolutely no pedophilia," Evison told Patch about his coming-of-age book. "I think what bothers these folks is that it happens to be two boys, and it occurs at a church youth group meeting."

In response to the citizens' comments, Fairfax County Public Schools suspended circulation of the two books in high school libraries.

A group representing more than 425 LGBTQIA students from over 30 schools sent a letter last Thursday to the Fairfax County School Board calling on its members to reject the effort by some parents to remove the two books from school libraries.

The group, the Pride Liberation Project acknowledged in the letter that "Gender Queer" and "Lawn Boy" did contain descriptions of sex. "'Gender Queer' and 'Lawn Boy' offer much needed explanations to students who aren't able to ask staff or family members for fear of their safety."

The PLP's letter goes on to list a number of books in the county's school libraries depicting heterosexual relationships and descriptions of physical intimacy.

Robert Rigby Jr., co-president of FCPS Pride and a long-time teacher with FCPS, told Patch he believes the comments at the Sept. 23 school board meeting were a coordinated effort by conservative groups, timed to be used in Youngkin's campaign for governor.

According to The Daily Beast, Victoria Manning, a school board member in Virginia Beach, sent a letter to the school system’s superintendent last week asking that four books be removed from the school system’s high school libraries and curriculum, including “Lawn Boy” and “Gender Queer,” as well as “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest Gaines and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.

For Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Manning said she believes that the text was unfit for 12th- graders, The Daily Beast reported.

According to the American Library Association, “The Bluest Eye” was one of the most challenged books and targets of censorship in 2020 because it “was considered sexually explicit and depicts child sexual abuse.”

Loudoun Leads Way In Attacks

Loudoun County has seen a barrage of attacks on school board members by conservative groups that has led to arrests in some cases.

In February, a crowd gathered outside the Loudoun County Government Center to call on officials to return the county's school system to in-person instruction five days a week and force teachers back into the classroom. The rally was attended by Republican candidates for governor and their supporters.

At the rally, Pete Snyder, a technology entrepreneur and former Fox News contributor who was running against Youngkin for the Republican nomination for governor, issued a warning to school officials in Virginia who do not approve a return to full-time classroom instruction. "If you are standing in the way of our kids getting back into the classroom, we are coming after you," Snyder said.

Conservatives in Loudoun County have been complaining about the Loudoun County Public School system's use of what they view as age-inappropriate book in high schools.

Loudoun County is home to Patrick Henry College, a Christian college founded in 1998 by Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association. Many conservative parents in Loudoun have moved their children out of county's public schools and are now home-schooling them.

Keena said it is not clear whether these types of issues — in this case, books in public school libraries — are an effective way of winning elections.

"For example, we know that the Republican base is very responsive to these types of attacks, and it fits within the worldview that their culture is under attack by secular liberals," he said. "But there isn't a lot of evidence that this actually helps Republicans win people who would ordinarily support Democrats, or people who do not affiliate with either party."

On the other hand, Keena said attacks on books used in public schools "might undermine enthusiasm among Democrats, and convince some to stay home on Election Day, although there is not a lot of evidence that this is happening."

"After all, former President Trump and his allies deployed similar tactics in recent years, and the result is that Trump twice lost Virginia and no Republican has won statewide office here since 2009," Keena said.

RELATED:

• LGBTQ+ Group Decries Efforts To Ban 2 Books From School Libraries
• Rally Message To School Board Members: 'We Are Coming After You'