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SALT LAKE CITY — Kaitlyn Mahoney recalls not having access to the "language of me" growing up in Provo.
Mahoney is the owner of Under the Umbrella Bookstore in Salt Lake City, which specializes in sharing stories from LGBTQ perspectives and highlighting the voices of people of color. Mahoney on Thursday joined a group of over 100 people who came together for a read-in at the state Capitol hosted by Let Utah Read to advocate for the freedom to choose what to read and push back against legislation that clarifies school library book challenges.
The read-in came on the heels of the final passage of HB29 on Wednesday after the House voted 52-18 to approve the legislation. Sponsored by Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, the bill gives the State Board of Education the option of holding a hearing after three school districts or two school districts and five charter schools determine the materials in a book are pornographic or indecent, which would trigger removal of the materials statewide.
In Senate debate last week, Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, said the legislation bans illicit pornography from being accessible in public school libraries.
"Illicit pornography is often graphic, X-rated descriptions or depictions of sexual acts that are designed to arouse and excite people. We're not trying to ban books simply because sexuality is mentioned or a sexual encounter is briefly described," Weiler said.
But Mahoney and other speakers don't see it that way, arguing that all the bill does is restrict marginalized voices and place the decision of what is deemed acceptable to read in the hands of a select few.
"We are faced with the kinds of challenges ... about people here at the Legislature who believe that the best way forward for the people of the state of Utah is for us and for other authority figures or groups of authorities to get together and make decisions for the citizens of the state of Utah about what information they should have access to (and) what literature they should have available to them to read," said Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City.
"They think they know better than parents ... better than educators, better than the children themselves what the children should be reading. That's a problem in my humble opinion," King said. "We have way too many people in the Utah State Legislature who want to be judgmental. They don't want to be curious."
Weiler last week pushed back against these notions, arguing that the legislation "is not an attempt to censor material for the sake of convenience or because the government disagrees with the materials' message. It does not ban any content because it explores racism, violence or alternative lifestyles or other controversial subject matters," he explained.
But opponents of the bill say that many of the books being challenged (and sometimes removed from shelves) in Utah are well respected and often award-winning books that explore ideas around topics like race and gender.
Lots of love for the freedom to read at the Utah State Capitol today - the same day #utleg passed another bill to purge books from library shelves. Ask Gov Cox to veto hb29 https://t.co/0aAcQcVwRkpic.twitter.com/UGyklyF6ma
— Let Utah Read (@LetUtahRead) February 22, 2024
"These bills speak passionately about preserving our innocence, but they rarely consider how much of that innocence is already robbed when books that represent students are dismissed as pornographic material," Bhavika Malik, a student at Herriman High School, said. "Bans on books like 'The Bluest Eye' or 'Forever' do not protect students' innocence, they only legitimize a purity culture that is rooted in racism or misogyny."
In 2022, the Utah Legislature approved the contentious HB374, which lawmakers described as a way to challenge and weed out content found to be pornographic from K-12 libraries and classrooms.
This led to challenges of the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Quran in what appeared to be pushback against the legislation. Weiler called the challenges an attempt to make "a mockery" of the legislation.
In response to HB29, King on Wednesday proposed HB583 with the hopes that it will "get across the point that it's important that we look at things (books) in their entirety," he said, describing it as a "counterweight to the kind of book banning bills that we see in the Utah State Legislature."
One component of the bill is that any challenged book has to be reviewed in its entirety, not just specific sections.
"The work as a whole is important to evaluate as a whole and determine whether it has value as opposed to just picking and choosing the stuff that you think is objectionable," King said.
Organizers of the read-in ended the event by urging people to sign a petition asking Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to veto HB29.
"I opened 'Under the Umbrella' because I know the transformative power of representative media. Reading saved my life," Mahoney said. "They are trying to ban us from books so they can ban us from life. I want to be clear that what is being banned is queer, it is trans, it is Black, it is brown, it is Indigenous, it is Palestinian, it is Muslim (and) it is everything that is not like them because they are afraid."
Contributing: Marjorie Cortez
