AASA stands in solidarity with the LGBTQI+ community, which is facing increasing hostility from far-right groups across the US, and now in Dearborn, MI. The latest iteration of homophobic expression revolved around efforts by a number of Dearborn parents to ban books with LBGTQI+ themes from local high school libraries, as reported in this article by an NPR affiliate in Detroit.
Book bans are censorship and limit First Amendment rights. We support the view of the American Library Association which recently stated “We are committed to defending the constitutional rights of all individuals, of all ages, to use the resources and services of libraries. We champion and defend the freedom to speak, the freedom to publish, and the freedom to read, as promised by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” We also support and recognize that students in public schools are entitled to First Amendment rights. We further recognize that LBGTQI+ youth are facing undue targeting and demonization in these latest efforts to ban LBGTQI+ -themed books in schools.
Gender and sexual violence are part of colonialist and imperialist violence, but they also demand reckoning from within Arab and Muslim American communities, a number of whom have adopted right-wing rhetoric to express homophobic and anti-trans sentiments. Similarly, anti-trans- and homophobic outcries play into local and national politics to sway elections and intimidate liberal and progressive public officials as reported in this article by the Detroit Free Press. This reckoning is not new, and many of our members have been documenting, analyzing, and working against such violence while uplifting voices and agency from this intersection.
At the same time, this reckoning must not become a pawn in the service of fomenting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. Early news coverage of the Dearborn event described the crowd as “unruly” and “boisterous” which plays into long-held stereotypes of Arab and Muslim Americans.
The effort to ban LGBTQI+ books amounts to an erasure of LGBTQI+ identities within Arab and Muslim communities as well as in the broader US-American social fabric. As an intellectual organization, we oppose book banning and stand solidly in solidarity with the LGBTQI+ community in resisting efforts of erasure, silencing, discrimination, and oppression. The rights of the LGBTQI+ community undeniably intersect and overlap with the rights of Arab and Muslim communities at large, as all are alternately demonized or ostracized at the political whims of their would-be detractors.
AASA affirms the full and civil rights of LGBTQI+ communities. It is unjustifiable to remain silent in the face of attacks on the civil rights of the LGBTQI+ community while working for civil rights for Arab and Muslim Americans and human rights for all SWANA peoples and cultures.
To learn more about this issue and find ways to voice your support, please see this open letter from For the Binat, Accountability for Dearborn, and Queer Crescent.
November 2022
