As part of the build-up to June’s Safer To Be Me Symposium, we are proud to be sharing our Safer To Be Me: Global Voices blog series, showcasing LGBTQ+ themes from around the globe, written by ReportOUT volunteers.
This week’s blog comes from ReportOUT Researcher, Tim Hanley from the Republic of Ireland, who analyses trends in censoring LGBTQ+ content in classrooms and libraries around the world
In recent months, libraries and bookstores in Dublin, Ireland, have been targeted by groups seeking to have LGBTQI+ educational and non-fiction books removed from their shelves (Irish Independent 2023). The books in question are all part of the Irish government-approved Rainbow Reads list of LGBTQI+ inclusive titles recommended for young readers.
While Dublin’s public libraries have rebuked these complaints and confirmed that the books will remain on their shelves, this push to ban LGBTQI+ inclusive content is indicative of a worrying trend gathering steam internationally.
Just this month, the best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series of children’s book became the latest title to face such restrictions, when the Tanzanian government announced a list of “immoral” books it has banned as a result of LGBTQI+ related concerns (The Citizen 2023).
Concerted efforts and laws to ban books with LGBTQI+ themes, or otherwise restrict or prevent individuals, and especially children (defined as anyone under the age of 18 years), from accessing information about LGBTQI+ issues are nothing new, and have a long history and global reach.
Laws prohibiting the “promotion” of LGBTQI+ rights and communities, are often a central plank of broader crackdowns on sexual and gender minorities and their rights.
In one of the most notorious examples, Section 28 of the United Kingdom’s Local Government Act 1988 prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities and was in force from 1988 to 2003 (2000 in Scotland). This profoundly homophobic law had devastating consequences for LGBTQI+ youth, and its chilling effects impacted the lives and rights of the wider LGBTQI+ community (The Guardian 2018).
More recently, Russia’s so-called “anti-gay propaganda law” has banned the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations” among minors since it was enacted in 2013. At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law an expanded version that prohibits all “promotion” of LGBTIQ-related topics in the media or in public, regardless of age. In June 2021, Hungary similarly introduced legislation which prohibits the sharing of information or content which “promotes” homosexuality or gender identity to minors.
Empty Bookshelves Across America
The United States is currently facing a record number of state-level anti-LGBTQI+ bills (ACLU 2023) and a broader environment of increasingly incendiary attacks on LGBTQI+ people and their rights. It is against this backdrop that the US has experienced an exponential growth in anti-LGBTQ book bans over the last number of years.
According to a recent PEN America report, the majority of books banned during the 2021-22 school year – 41% of all banned titles – feature LGBTQI+ protagonists, characters or themes. At least 40% of all book bans are connected to proposed or enacted legislation, or to pressure from politicians to restrict the teaching or presence of certain topics.
Three laws passed in the State of Florida – including the infamous Parental Rights in Education Act, commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law – are emblematic in this regard. These wide-ranging, censorious laws work in tandem to limit schools’ ability to address issues around race, sexual orientation and gender identity, and to literally and figuratively empty bookshelves in school districts across Florida.
While the architects of such laws commonly cite a concern for protecting children as the impetus for their enactment, these laws can and do have devastating effects on the rights, health and wellbeing of children and young people (The Trevor Project 2023), particularly LGBTQI+ youth (UN 2019).
Under international human rights law and standards, children have the right to receive comprehensive, accurate, objective, and age-appropriate information concerning sexuality and gender identity (COE 2010).
Laws banning LGBTQI+ content or preventing LGBTQI+ issues from being discussed in school or publicly may violate children’s rights to expression, information, health and education (Yogyakarta Principles 2010), particularly under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. More broadly, under Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals, States have committed to ensure “inclusive and equitable quality education…for all”.
The Legitimisation of Stigmatisation
Various international bodies, including UN human rights mechanisms, have condemned these laws as incompatible with human rights law, and criticised their negative impacts on the rights and lives of young people, LGBTQI+ communities, and particularly LGBTQI+ youth. Most recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in the case of Macatė v. Lithuania that labelling a book of fairy tales as harmful to children solely because of its LGBTQI+ content breached Article 10 (Freedom of Expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR 2023).
Taking away vital resources from young people that enable them to understand themselves and the world they live in does nothing to protect them.
Today’s book bans and other legislative measures to restrict or prevent people from accessing information about LGBTQI+ issues follow a long history of attempts to marginalise, exclude and oppress sexual and gender minorities.
Their current deployment is part of a broader, and often systematic and state-sponsored, homophobic and transphobic crackdown on LGBTQI+ lives and rights. Predicated on the idea that LGBTQI+ themed books are not appropriate for young people, such bans serve to legitimise stigmatising and stereotyped narratives about the LGBTQI+ community, emboldening those who would discriminate or commit acts of violence against us.
These laws are not just about these books. These laws are about the rights of LGBTQI+ people to exist in public. There are also clear backlash dynamics at play in countries like the US. That such laws, restrictions and mobilisations continue to proliferate, despite some significant global advances that have been made on LGBTQI+ rights in recent years, demonstrates just how precarious our rights are and how little room there is for complacency.
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Tim’s blog is part of ReportOUT’s Safer To Be Me: Global Voices series, in support of the Safer To Be Me Symposium, a joint ReportOUT-University of Sunderland project, which will take place on 22nd June 2023 at Sunderland University in the North East of England.
The symposium will create a safe space where some of the most important issues facing international LGBTQI+ human rights can be explored and discussed in great detail, as well as encouraging a call to action where all involved can identify meaningful ways to be proactive and make a powerful impact. To find out more, visit our website