By: Haley Palmer

Literature is the final defense we have when our rights are being stripped from us, but is that going to fail too?

How Did We Get Here?

Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term as the President of the United States, it’s safe to say that every minority group has been negatively impacted by his legislation. We have seen an increase in ICE arrests, the rollback of DEI, the violence against peaceful protests by cops–the list goes on. I told myself there was no way we could survive another four years of this, and it honestly doesn’t seem like we will. The market is crashing, we’re bordering on a recession, and the tariffs–please don’t get me started on the tariffs.

And we’ve all read stories like this. About how the government is greedy, how the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, how the everyday person is the one stuck in the apocalypse because they didn’t spend $21 trillion dollars building a city underneath the United States. And in a twisted way, I can kind of see why a political leader would want to censor or ban books that give freethinking to the very people they want to manipulate. Why 1984 by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, or Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler would be banned. It opens the public's eyes to what they have been or will be subjected to under an intolerant, bigoted, power-hungry leader. But what about queer literature?

There is no timeline that I exist in where I can see or understand the banning or censorship of queer literature. And we’re seeing it happen before our very eyes. We are seeing the challenge of queer books in schools and libraries. This action paints the picture that identifying as a queer person is inherently bad, and not something that should be encouraged or even represented in the books people read. It allows for more hate crimes and intolerance to follow suit. It says everything without saying anything at all.

For further context, “The Pentagon has issued a list of books, or chapters from books, to be immediately pulled from Department of Defense schools. It includes course material on gender and sexuality for high-school students,” (Victoria University).

Censorship is a large conversation even without pinpointing one specific topic, but it seems like Donald Trump’s focus is on anything having to do with the LGBTQ+ community and the BIPOC community. “Trump’s direct ban on “teaching ‘gender ideology’ and ‘critical race theory’ in the classroom” marks a new front in the censorship battles,” (Victoria University). And it’s not just readers that are upset about this, it’s the publishing industry as well.

In the beginning of 2025, five publishing houses–Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, and Simon & Schuster–filed a joint lawsuit challenging book banning in schools and libraries. This lawsuit challenges Idaho’s House Bill 710…”it requires libraries to move materials considered harmful to children to an area for adults only, and forbids anyone under 18 from accessing library books with “sexual content,” (Victoria University). An earlier lawsuit “argued the removal or restriction of books about “race, racism and LGBTQ identities,” and those by non-white and/or LGBTQ authors, violated the US constitution's First Amendment (protecting free speech) and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment,” (Victoria University). Censorship is a direct enemy of free speech, something that a lot of supporters of Donald Trump love to take advantage of. Saying racial and homophobic slurs, claiming it’s free speech and it’s unconstitutional if you take that away from them. These are the backward ideologies that the President and his supporters believe, and it’s making this country unsafer day by day.

Under the Idaho Bill, the definition of sexual conduct is “any act of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, the breast.”

Some books that have been banned or challenged in recent years include Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages edited by Saundra Mitchell, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, and This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson.

With this background knowledge, it becomes pretty clear what these bans mean for books that center around queer characters, or are written by queer authors. Putting homosexuality under the definition of sexual conduct also perpetuates this idea that sexual orientation is the same as a sexual act. With these damaging ideas of the queer community coming from people like the President and those who hold high power in government, it pushes for the dismantling of any safe spaces for them.

Where Will We Go?

We’ve seen censorship already running rampant since the start of Trump’s presidency, with pro-Palestine advocates getting detained for speaking against genocide, videos on social media getting taken down, certain words in the captions getting flagged, and censoring videos. It’s hard to imagine that literature–something that has been seen as a vessel and a tool for freedom of speech and self-expression–can be targeted next, but we’ve already seen it happen in other capacities. Censoring and banning books because of a character or an author's sexual orientation is the start of fueling hatred towards the queer community.

For many of us, no matter what we are struggling to talk about, whether it’s our sexuality, navigating friendships, or experiencing anxiety for the first time, we feel seen through books. Because there is no one that can judge us for being who we are, and we can feel a little bit less alone in this dark and scary world.

Our worldview gets smaller and smaller by the second with the legislation that is coming out of the White House. The ACLU is tracking 575 Anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. Here are some examples:

Georgia is advancing Curriculum Censorship and Forced Outing in Schools.

Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, and California, just to name a few, are advancing other anti-LGBTQ bills. Alabama, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas are also advancing Other Expression Restriction bills. (ACLU.org)

We are going to start to see new curriculum rollouts that are designed to actively silence the queer community, with resources being taken away from those who need them. This becomes extremely dangerous in red states, places where anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is strong and highly encouraged, making people afraid to be who they really are. Not only in fear of what it could mean in terms of support from family and friends but also from the violence that the queer community faces every single day.

Every day it gets clearer and clearer that the America we are moving towards is one full of intolerance and hate, with the queer community being at the forefront of those targeted. Couple that with the censorship that Trump wants to put on all forms of media, on what we can say against certain places, against certain people, and we are going to see the decline of human empathy and the rise of apathy.

I think it’s easy to look the other way when we see certain types of books being banned. Books that are anti-religion or critiquing the government are things that I could understand censoring if I was that kind of person. It’s not necessarily affecting us personally, as those themes are generally hidden in allegory and not right in your face as a reader. But you can’t gloss over a queer character, or a queer author, or a lived queer experience. That’s where I personally think the important distinction lies.

If this past year and a half has shown me anything, it’s that humans are very good at turning a blind eye when something does not directly affect us. Why should you care about a genocide happening across the world? Why should you care about slave labor if it means you get a new phone? And I believe this is what the administration relies on. There’s not going to be pushback from the communities that aren’t directly affected, causing a divide in this country, with a majority siding with Donald Trump in the first place. We are going to see bills advanced and legislation passed removing queer literature from schools and banning it from libraries. We are going to see anti-LGBTQ+ bills advanced and legislation passed because this administration is fueled by hate and intolerance. We are going to see less and less queer representation in physical media, leaving people with no access to the stories or the authors–leaving them to exist in a vacuum of an intolerant world.

I know all of this information can seem a bit doomsday-esque, but it’s important to be aware of what is happening to understand how to move forward. While it might feel impossible to be the catalyst for change in a time where free speech and the freedom of protest is being punished, there are things we can do from the ground that can show solidarity with the queer community.

Pre-ordering queer books from your local bookstores and requesting them from your library will showcase demand, talking about queer books on social media and recommending them to your friends, family or audience will create buzz. If you live in a place where queer books are being threatened, go to your town hall meetings, go to the open forums and use your voice.

Queer voices are being shut down every single day, and it’s important to recognize privilege and use it where you can. We have the ability to start the conversation, to amplify their stories. And when people in power want to silence us, it’s our job to push back, and to scream louder than ever before.