A San Francisco-based bookstore has decided to stop selling books by the world-renowned author J.K. Rowling due to her opposition to transgenderism.
The bookstore slammed Rowling for using her earnings from the Harry Potter series to help create the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, which says it’s committed to “fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.” The bookstore deems this fight for women’s safety so offensive that it has removed all of Rowling’s books from its shelves.
For the last few years, Democrats have doubled down on their insistence that conservatives are fascist dictators, hell bent on banning books. Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris criticized Republican lawmakers for attempting to restrict certain books from classrooms, with Democrats characterizing it as a hostile attack on free speech.
Ever the opportunists, several Democrat-controlled states began passing laws to prevent books from being removed from classrooms due to the background or views of the author. New Jersey, Illinois, Minnesota, and other states launched so-called “Freedom to Read” initiatives, mischaracterizing the First Amendment in their push for sexually explicit books like This Book is Gay, Gender Queer, and All Boys Aren’t Blue to be featured in taxpayer-funded schools and libraries. They wielded disingenuous “censorship” allegations, pretending Republican-led states like Florida were racist, homophobic, Nazi-like regimes.
But the ban on Rowling’s work suggests leftists were never the safeguards of free speech they pretended to be. The San Francisco bookstore explicitly deplatformed Rowling for her viewpoint. The store’s staff, who self-identify as “a group of queer booksellers,” don’t want any perspectives that challenge their own worldview. California has passed multiple bills promoting “inclusive” books in schools and public libraries, to the praise of Democrats. But when it comes to a private book seller, insistence on so-called diversity doesn’t include the massively popular series of an author who believes boys and girls are different.
Rowling hasn’t threatened anyone or called for violence, unlike certain pro-transgender activists who have threatened to rape and murder the author. On the contrary, her new fund focuses on ensuring the safety of women. While the bookshop said Rowling was dedicated to “removing transgender rights,” Rowling is only attempting to represent women who have had their rights infringed upon by radical leftist policies.
Of course, private bookstores are different than public libraries and schools. A random bookstore in deep-blue San Francisco can remove Rowling’s books if it so chooses. But with moves like this, leftists continue to prove that their fight against “book banning” was never about preserving inclusivity and free speech; it was about promoting a rainbow worldview and silencing anyone who successfully opposes it.
Unlike Harry Potter, most of the books removed from public schools and libraries were not authored by someone with an allegedly controversial viewpoint. Instead, they were age-inappropriate at best and pornographic at worst, freely offered to children without their parents’ consent. This Book Is Gay, which is found in the “young adult” sections of taxpayer-funded libraries, instructs teens on how to perform gay sex. Another book, George, recommended for third graders, depicts a child exploring his sexuality and eventually coming out to his friends as “Melissa.” These books, and many more like them, exist to sexualize kids and promote queer sex to adolescents.
The National Coalition Against Censorship and other left-wing groups have fought to normalize this sexualization under the guise of free expression. Yet this insincere fight is revealed to be a farce when it comes to conservative speech — or, as leftists lazily and wrongly call it, “hate speech.”
In the store’s announcement that it would ban Rowling’s books, the staff said, “[W]e also had our adolescence shaped by wizards and elves. Look at us, it’s obvious.” The magic found in the pages of Rowling’s books can no longer be found at this store, but the liberal propaganda is hard to miss.
Brooke Brandtjen is a writer and journalist from Wisconsin who focuses primarily on culture, politics, and religion. She is extremely passionate about the arts and history, and is honored to write for a variety of distinguished publications.
