We’re excited to share this front-page article for the winter 2022 edition of Women’s Quarterly of the Morning Sentinel / Kennebec Journal. It features the First Amendment Museum’s co-founder and president of the board, Genie Gannett as she talks about her family history and future plans with the First Amendment Museum.
This article was written by Nancy P. McGinnis and was originally published on Thursday, January 20, 2022. You can read the entire edition online here.
The right to freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental right guaranteed to all people. It protects the right to believe the orthodoxy of centuries-old institutions and the right to believe the “heresy” that has given rise to countless denominations, sects, and interpretations of that orthodoxy. It also protects the freedom to change one’s belief — and, indeed, to leave behind religious belief all together.
That right to freely believe according to one’s own conscience, however, was never intended to exempt religious adherents from their obligations under the law. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1788, “The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.”
Unfortunately, in recent years, this right has been viewed as fundamentally in conflict with a range of laws, policies, and other rights. As Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke recently wrote, today’s Supreme Court has elevated religious rights to a first-tier status, “while all others (such as public health, reproductive health, race/sex/LGBTQ equality) enjoy a lower constitutional status.”
“I am deeply troubled by the direction of our nation’s federal judiciary on religious matters. They have repeatedly prioritized the “beliefs” of institutions over individuals, inflexible doctrine over common-sense accommodation, and Christian hegemony over pluralism.”
We don’t need to look far to see example after example. In a recent decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Catholic agency seeking to discriminate against prospective adoptive and foster parents in Philadelphia because of their sexual orientation. In multiple cases related to bans on large gatherings at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Court sided with churches over lawmakers and public health officials, holding that because liquor stores and other retail shops could be open, so too could churches. And in Hobby Lobby, the Court decided that at least some for-profit corporations must be exempt from regulations to which they hold a religious objection.
In all of these cases, the “right” afforded to religious organizations placed a direct burden on others: couples seeking to adopt (and young people waiting for a home), the community as a whole seeking to control a raging pandemic, and women needing birth control who happen to be employed by a craft store.
These burdens are increasingly being borne by those who can least afford to look elsewhere for services and resources. In the closing days of the Trump Administration, a range of agencies, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Education, and others, rolled back rules that required religious providers, which receive billions of dollars in federal tax dollars annually, to take steps to protect the rights of service recipients, instead choosing to elevate the rights of the religious providers. Previously, the rules had required that providers inform recipients of their rights, including their right not to participate in religious activities as a precondition of receiving benefits. This common-sense provision ensured that no one — whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, or any other religious perspective — would be coerced into religious worship that was incompatible with their own beliefs.
Our government’s reliance on private, often religious, entities to provide essential services with government funding like adoption and foster care, housing for people experiencing homelessness, food aid for the hungry, and substance abuse treatment, means that these entities’ choice to discriminate — or condition their assistance on beneficiaries’ participation in religious programming — is no less an abridgement of the freedom of religion and belief of individuals than if it were our own government doing the same. In rural counties, these religious providers are often the only option available. But geography shouldn’t dictate which fundamental rights are available to us.
I am deeply troubled by the direction of our nation’s federal judiciary on religious matters. They have repeatedly prioritized the “beliefs” of institutions over individuals, inflexible doctrine over common-sense accommodation, and Christian hegemony over pluralism.
It’s my hope that members of the Supreme Court — and some of the loudest voices in the debate about religious freedom — come to recognize that this distorted vision of “religious freedom,” a universal opt-out from any law religious organizations don’t like, threatens the rights of all Americans and would be unrecognizable to Jefferson and the framers of our Constitution.
By Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, a national organization that defends civil rights for atheists, freethinkers, and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of religion and government; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy. Fish has spent more than a decade organizing and advocating on behalf of atheists and other non-religious Americans.
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Freedom of religion has trampled the rights of many American citizens, as well as those who were once enslaved
On January 16th, the same weekend as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday and holiday, is National Religious Freedom Day. Officially proclaimed by U.S. President Clinton in 1993, this day highlights the diversity of religious belief, and reinforces the right to said expression freely.
On January 16th, the same weekend as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday and holiday, is National Religious Freedom Day. Officially proclaimed by U.S. President Clinton in 1993, this day highlights the diversity of religious belief, and reinforces the right to said expression freely.
How fitting that these two occasions flow together, especially in honor of a person who was a champion for Civil Rights in this country. However, there is still a segment of the U.S. population that is largely excluded in the fight for religious freedom – those who do not believe in god at all.
“What is undeniable is that there is still much fear and misunderstanding about [non-believers], not only in the United States, but also around the world.”
The nonreligious population is the fastest growing in the United States. There are a few terms used to describe us – atheist, agnostic, humanist, secular, etc. Some of these terms are used together, others interchangeably. But what is undeniable is that there is still much fear and misunderstanding about us, not only in the United States, but also around the world.
A look into history reveals that the freedom of religion has been weaponized and used to trample the rights of many American citizens, as well as those who were once enslaved in this country. Prior to the American Revolution, separation of church and state was almost nonexistent, and Christianity was the religion that dominated privilege. 250 years later, the cries of America, the “Christian nation,” have been fueled by the brutal treatment of Muslims/Non-Christians after September 11th, 2001 and heard as recently as the violent display at the nation’s Capital on January 6th, 2021.
The current Presidential administration promises a progressive horizon, with an emphasis on science, evidence-based information and practices, and respect for human rights and liberties. What remains to be seen as we approach this upcoming National Religious Freedom Day, is the full respect and pluralism that the freedom was established to uphold. The same pluralism that Dr. King fought for, and that the nonreligious are still routinely denied.
My organization, Black Nonbelievers, has focused on increasing the presence of atheists and religion doubters in Black communities, as well as providing much needed support and empowerment. While the overall number of “nones” is rising, research shows that approximately 79 percent of the Black population still place religious belief at the center of their lives. The Black Nonreligious Americans report, released jointly with American Atheists in October of 2021, reveals a harsh reality about the illusion of religious freedom.
However, there has been progress in recent years. Organizations such as the National Museum for African American History and Culture and the Religious Freedom Center have begun including the nonreligious perspective in programming. The creation of the Congressional Freethought Caucus is also very important in representing nonreligious voices. It is great to see genuine interest in the changing trends in religious belief, especially in young people, and how communities are arising outside of traditional norms.
What religious freedom means to me and many of my fellow nonbelievers, is the freedom FROM religion. To be rightfully recognized as human beings who place evidence and reason over divine intervention. It is the ability to state objectively that we don’t believe and why, without facing repercussions and ostracism. It is the opportunity to work alongside our religious counterparts, and the right to openly challenge human rights violations committed for religious reasons. And finally, to hold our lawmakers accountable for upholding separation of church and state. Very much like Dr. King did.
As the number of atheists and nonreligious continues to grow, I am confident that the nation will begin to see us for who we are – hardworking, passionate people who care about issues that affect us. We care very much about the state of our communities, believers and nonbelievers alike. We are not telling people what to think and do, but that they SHOULD think for themselves. We are nothing to fear. We, in fact, are a reminder of what this country’s founding was intended to provide – religious freedom for ALL.
By Mandisa L. Thomas, founder and president of Black Nonbelievers. Thomas has appeared on ABC News.com, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and The Humanist. She was also named 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year.
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Five Freedoms Empower Individualism, Allow Fringes of Society to Flourish – for Good or Ill
On December 15, 1791, the Second Congress of the United States officially adopted the first ten […]
Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) share their thoughts on the importance of the First Amendment in advancing democracy.
U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine)
“[The First Amendment] enabled us to remain a free people, it enables us to engage in the rigorous debate that we have in this country, and to communicate with one another freely.”
– Senator Angus King
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine)
“Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of all other freedoms.”
– Senator Susan Collins
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Happy 230th Anniversary, Bill of Rights!
Celebrate the 230th Anniversary of the Ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15th The […]
On December 15, 1791, the Second Congress of the United States officially adopted the first ten amendments to the Constitution – the Bill of Rights – which protect our core freedoms. Beginning in 1789 when they were introduced by Congressman James Madison, the amendments were vigorously debated and eventually ratified by eleven of the fifteen states.
The Bill of Rights is a tool to reign in government power. As its Preamble states, its purpose is “….to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the government’s] powers…,“ and to “… best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.” Today, we often think of the Bill of Rights as a list of things the government allows us to do. In fact, it is a list of things the government cannot do. And paramount among the many things the government has no business interfering with are the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment.
Those freedoms—religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition—were bundled together very purposefully. Together, they represent the means by which people have ideas, share ideas, and transform those ideas into reality. The freedom of (and from) “religion” was understood by 18th century statesmen to encompass the freedom of unimpeded belief or thought. Madison called that “liberty of conscience” in a prior draft. Free thoughts, expressed with free speech, disseminated by a free press, debated and developed by free assemblies of other free thinkers, may eventually be pressured into legislative action through the process of petition.
That process of changing an idea into an action is what enables our society to evolve.
The five freedoms of the First Amendment also empower our individualism and allow the fringes of society to flourish, for good or ill. No one’s idea is too far-fetched to be shared, no speech too horrible to utter (unless it presents an imminent threat to the physical safety of others). No media source can be shut down for publishing controversial opinions or scandalous stories, or for speaking truth to power, or for holding the government accountable. No lawful peaceful gatherings can be forcibly disbanded – whether by vigilantes or the authorities; and no opinion can be declared an unlawful cause to petition the government to pay attention to, or to march in support of – no matter how distasteful.
“The First Amendment is complicated and frustrating in its inclusivity. The spectrum of its freedoms empower our individualism on the one hand and enables our collective voice on the other.”
– Christian Cotz
The First Amendment is complicated and at times frustrating in its inclusivity. The spectrum of its freedoms empowers our individualism on the one hand and enables our collective voice on the other. It facilitates our ability to change the structure of our government, and to decide who gets a voice in that government (and how much of one), but it also can be used to prevent change from happening, to bulwark position and privilege, and to support the status quo. It is the power and the inertia on both sides of the metronome.
Americans, no matter how polarized we may be, share a common purpose or goal, whether we are conscious of it or not, from the Preamble of the Constitution: “to form a more perfect Union.”
The five freedoms in the First Amendment are what empower us, we the people, to create that more perfect union.
On the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights and the official adoption of the First Amendment, the question is, will we ever agree on what a more perfect union might look like?
The First Amendment protects our right to live our freedoms even as we debate the question.
By Christian Cotz, CEO of the First Amendment Museum
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Happy 230th Anniversary, Bill of Rights!
Celebrate the 230th Anniversary of the Ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15th The […]
Freedom of religion has trampled the rights of many American citizens, as well as those who were once enslaved
On January 16th, the same weekend as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday and holiday, is National Religious Freedom Day. Officially proclaimed by U.S. President Clinton in 1993, this day highlights the diversity of religious belief, and reinforces the right to said expression freely.
Celebrate the 230th Anniversary of the Ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15th
The five essential freedoms that empower the people to actively engage in the democratic process were not enumerated in the original Constitution drafted at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, but were added in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified. Those five freedoms—religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition—are safeguarded and preserved in the First Amendment to the Constitution. In honor of the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment Museum hosts a virtual celebration on this historic day. Listen to the remarks of U.S. Senators, historians, lawyers, journalists, and advocates on the importance of the First Amendment in advancing democracy.
A Double-Edged Sword: Reflections on 230 Years of First Amendment History
Left to right: Speakers Dmitry Bam, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Peter Onuf
The First Amendment gives voice to those who might otherwise go unheard and empowers Americans to create change in our society and government. It can also be used to prevent change from happening, to silence minorities, and to keep privilege in position. Each action is seen by some part of the population as an effort to create a more perfect union. On the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, join FAM Board member Peter Onuf, celebrated law professor and historian Annette Gordon-Reed, and noted Constitutional law professor Dmitry Bam as they reflect on the ways we have used the First Amendment as a tool to both transform society and to secure the status quo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeXhiUXUo9o
Recorded Live Zoom/FB Event on 12/15/2021
Watch & Learn: Importance of the First Amendment: Remarks by U.S. Senators from Maine
Left to right: U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine)
The First Amendment Museum shares remarks from U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) on the First Amendment’s importance in advancing democracy.
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine)
U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine)
Watch & Learn: Our Freedoms at Work
Left to right: Jennifer Rooks, Chelsea Miller, and Destie Hohman Sprague
The First Amendment impacts the work of journalists, activists and lobbyists every day. Watch Maine Public’s Public Affairs Host and Producer of “Maine Calling” Jennifer Rooks, CEO and Co-founder of the Freedom March NYC Chelsea Miller, and Executive Director of the Maine Women’s Lobby Destie Hohman Sprague reflect on this moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6PXA6wwKl4&t=8s
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Art Review: A Future without Prisons, Manmade and Metaphorical
In Maine, statewide public project ‘Freedom & Captivity’ examines the end of incarceration, the effects of […]
In Maine, statewide public project ‘Freedom & Captivity’ examines the end of incarceration, the effects of surveillance, and the state’s own history of intolerance.
By Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe, Globe Correspondent
Excerpt from the article: “The First Amendment Museum in Augusta’s “First Freedoms in Captivity” show, which is viewable online, spotlights art by imprisoned veterans illustrating the First Amendment’s five freedoms. An anonymous artist at Maine State Prison crafted “Freedom Within,” a bird in a red, white, and blue cage, from paper, string, and gum wrappers — a picture of freedom curtailed by the state.” Read the full article in the Boston Globe >
The First Amendment Museum’s exhibition explores individual liberties of incarcerated veterans and the limitations of their First Amendment rights while in the military and incarcerated.
Anonymous at Maine State Prison, “Freedom Within,” paper, string, gum wrappers, 2021.
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Banned Books Week: Young Adult Books
As part of Banned Books Week 2021, which ran this year from September 26th through October […]
Excerpts from the Free Speech Handbook by Ian Rosenberg, artwork by Mike Cavallaro
In honor of Free Speech Week 2021, we’re sharing a few pages from the new graphic novel Free Speech Handbook, written by Ian Rosenberg and illustrated by Mike Cavallaro.
Learn more about the Free Speech Handbook, which is available to pre-order before its November 30th release.
Note: Please click on each image to enlarge.
Ian Rosenberg has over twenty years of experience as a media lawyer, and has worked as legal counsel for ABC News since 2003. He graduated with distinction from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and magna cum laude from Cornell Law School. Rosenberg is also an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker, and teaches media law at Brooklyn College. He is the author of The Fight for Free Speech (NYU Press 2021), which Kirkus called in a starred review, “Essential reading for journalists, political activists, and ordinary citizens alike.”
Mike Cavallaro is from New Jersey and has worked in comics and animation since the early 1990s. His comics include Eisner Award–nominated Parade (with fireworks), The Life and Times of Savior 28 (written by J.M. DeMatteis), Foiled and Curses! Foiled Again (written by Jane Yolen), Decelerate Blue (written by Adam Rapp), and the Nico Bravo series (a 2019 New York Public Library Best Books for Kids selection).
For more information about their new graphic novel, Free Speech Handbook, visit www.FreeSpeechHandbook.com.
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An online exhibition exploring the history of political cartoons and their power as a form of speech.
Let’s begin by acknowledging that many of you reading this don’t like or respect journalists – or at least don’t trust what you see and hear from many of them.
The new Freedom Forum survey “Where America Stands” about the First Amendment found that we’re ambivalent about the free press we have even as we support press freedom as an important value.
In the survey, 58% of Americans agreed the news media should act as a watchdog on government. But only 14% of respondents trust journalists.
But Friday morning the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia – and that announcement should be cheered no matter where you fall in those survey results.
“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies, and war propaganda,” the Nobel committee chairperson said in announcing the recipients. The pair won this year’s prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”
Both journalists face death threats. Ressa co-founded the online news web report Rappler in 2012, focused on reporting on Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial anti-drug campaign – which has been linked to human rights abuses including murder – and on government attempts to spread misinformation for political purposes.
Muratov was one of the founders of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 1993, and editor-in-chief since 1995. The newspaper is one of the few national news operations still open in Russia, often reporting on President Vladimir Putin’s ties to corruption and killings. Six of the paper’s journalists have been murdered, including investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot in 2006 in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building – on Putin’s birthday.
Muratov (L) and Ressa (R), photo source The Guardian
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 18 journalists have been killed thus far in 2021.
Lest we think threats to the working press are just an overseas issue, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker – a collaborative organization of free press groups – lists 134 assaults on reporters and correspondents this year – ranging from physical attacks, to injuries from police “soft bullets,” to online harassment – and 34 incidents in which equipment was deliberately damaged. Recent assaults have come when reporters were covering anti-COVID-19-mask demonstrations.
The last journalists killed in the U.S. in connection with their work was in 2018, when a gunman killed four newsroom staffers and a sales associate at the Capitol Gazette, in Annapolis, Md.
The skepticism showing in the Freedom Forum survey is disappointing given the nation’s long commitment to freedom of the press – along with the four other First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and petition. But we live in difficult, polarized times in which a combination of financial weakness, technological challenges, and political opportunism have fed increased attacks on journalism as biased and untruthful.
Once seen as a global beacon of press freedom because of strong First Amendment protections, politicians in recent years have profited from portraying “the media” as – in one infamous claim by ex-President Donald Trump – “enemies of the people.”
Perhaps even more damaging to public perception has been the massive layoffs of reporting staffers and newspaper closings around the nation. In the past 20 years, newsroom staffing has fallen by more than one-half, and so many news outlets have closed that large areas of the U.S. are now considered “news deserts” in which no local newspaper or broadcast operation exists.
And then there are the high profile, pseudo-journalism attractions on cable news networks, with programs and high-rated performers offering opinion-laced commentary under the guise of “news” – all amplified by social media targeted by algorithms to those already inclined to be media critics.
To be sure, no media operation is perfect. But increased efforts by the news industry to include diverse views and to reach minority audiences all too often ignored in the past, have yet to show any major impact on the public’s views. At least two recent studies show even the news media’s traditional role as a “watchdog on government” has less support from the public than in years past.
Bluntly, even if you don’t like most of what the news media in the U.S. does right now, you’re wrong to abandon support for the “watchdog” role. Most public officials are honest, hard-working people who should be applauded for their work on our behalf. But some are not. Mistakes also occur. And it’s asking too much, in a common-sense way, for public bodies and elected officials to police themselves while doing their jobs.
There’s a reason Putin and Duterte – and dozens of actual and would-be despots around the world – fear and attack journalists: As the old saying goes, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
At its best, and often, journalism provides us with that “sunlight” – information that reports, reveals, and tracks down those who must be held accountable as they control the public purse strings – and at times, our liberty, and lives.
Ressa has been arrested many times, and is the target of an online hate campaign because of her reporting on the Duterte regime. Muratov said of the Nobel honor that it belongs to “those who died defending the right of people to freedom of speech.”
In a program Friday at the annual News Leaders Association convention, CPJ executive director Joel Simon noted that governments worldwide have “deployed their resources” in support of a “hate machine” to manipulate public opinion against journalists. Simon and Brazilian journalist Patricia Campos Mello – who also faces death threats — noted that threats to a free press in the U.S. are more like to resemble those in her nation: legal moves to obstruct truthful reporting and organized efforts at misinformation to cast doubt about the role of journalist watchdogs.
Skepticism about the news media no doubt will not see a major shift because of the Nobel committee’s decision. And legitimate criticism of the news media has value.
But perhaps we all might pause for just a moment to honor the courage shown by Ressa, Muratov, Campos Mello, and thousands of others who risk their safety and their lives to bring the news to their fellow citizens, here and abroad.
Gene Policinski is the secretary of the Board of Directors of the First Amendment Museum and frequently writes on issues involving the First Amendment.
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Who’s on the “right side” in the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip? Well, don’t look for that answer here – but do know that good journalism allowed to do its job is among the ways to explore that question and more. Keep reading.
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Sigh … it’s “Banned Books Week” again
Guest blog post by Gene Policinski The words “banned” and “books” ought never be necessary in […]
The words “banned” and “books” ought never be necessary in the same sentence.
Even when used in the benign way of “Banned Books Week,” an annual event that this year runs from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2. Come to think of it, even that yearly title should not be in our vocabulary.
Much better to have just “Books Week,” don’t you think? Better sound to it, and a better idea behind it – except that we still will face the affront to the First Amendment’s concept of a “marketplace of ideas” from those who would hide from facts rather than face up to them.
Opposition is vocal today – and sometimes menacing – to the exposure to ideas some would not see: Too negative, too hateful, too shocking, too offensive, or just too critical of our past or our present. Those voices who would silence authors, and in doing so blind readers, declare multiple justifications: Patriotism, morality – as they see it – and even safety.
If only the issue of banning books was a subject unto itself. But in 2021 it’s not. Banning books in a local library or school system comes amid a time when “cancel culture” is on the rise, from electronic shunning via social media of people for supposed transgressions of the strict application of “political correctness” to physical intimidation at school board and town hall meetings with claims of “protecting the children” from issues that, in reality and in all too short a time, they will have to confront as adults.
Silence the speaker, the author, the social influencer and “poof,” problem solved – so the theory goes if advocates from both the left and right were to be honest with themselves. But taking a shortcut through the First Amendment by banning books – and the discussions and disruptions that come with reading them – is much quicker than dealing frankly and effectively with challenges such as the legacy of racism and prevalence of hate, with the debilitating effects of long-term poverty and the corrupting decay of discrimination.
This instinct to censor that which upsets us is not new. In what is believed to be the first ban on a book in what would become the United States, Puritan officials in Massachusetts banned a “tell-all” book critical of their new colony’s practices, “New English Canaan” – which contained serious criticisms that the Puritan ethic would lead to a nation little more than a “Christian labor camp”. The book also ridiculed the Puritan’s lack of learning, their gloomy approach to life, and even called Myles Standish and his men “Captain Shrimp and the nine worthies.” Pretty heady stuff for the middle-1600s, we can assume.
The issue of banning books was debated some 40 years ago on a higher plain, in the U.S. Supreme Court, in Island Trees School District (New York state) v. Pico – with a fractured court voting in 1982 to void a decision by the local school board to ban books by several notable authors.
The controversy and the decision covered ground all too familiar today. School board members, after attending a meeting sponsored by a conservative parents’ groups, banned nine books they found were available in high school and middle school libraries, as “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy.” The board later told a district court that “[i]t is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surely as from physical and medical dangers” – even after a committee created by the board advised reinstating the books with appropriate age and curriculum conditions.
“Pico” is notable as the first time the Supreme Court ruled against banning books from libraries, though the decision acknowledged school board authority over classroom materials. Perhaps the greatest point of agreement among the justices was that no one has the power to ban a book because of its content – be that political view, sexual imagery, or controversial subject. And, as one justice wrote in a concurring opinion, the First Amendment protects not only the right to express ideas, but also the right to receive them.
To be sure, no court decision requires anyone to read a book or prevents anyone from criticizing its use in schools – or it’s very value. But, as Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the 1940s, we ought to be exposed to ideas we find even repellent and repugnant, if only to be better prepared to argue against them.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reported for this year’s Banned Books Week there were 156 challenges in 2020 to library, school, and university materials and services in 2020, with 273 books targeted. [Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues (ala.org)].
Most often cited by opponents: Accounts of LGBTQIA lives, a focus on racial discrimination, profanity, depictions of alcoholism or “anti-police” views. Among those most challenged: “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck; and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee – to my view, certainly literary classics, but hardly the cutting edge of a rampant modern-day agenda to brainwash unsuspecting citizens.
Banning a book – or a thought – has never solved any problem or corrected any ill. But reading a book that leads to a thought has.
Gene Policinski is a member of the board of trustees and board secretary of the First Amendment Museum and frequently writes on issues involving the First Amendment.
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Join Maine author Spencer Stephens as he talks to us about censorship, banning books, and how to use your First Amendment rights every day.
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Paarlbergs on 9/11: Never Forget
Guest blogpost about 9/11 written by Muslim American couple Afshan and Adam Paarlberg Never forget. On […]
