I remember quietly and secretly watching “Boy Meets Boy” with my bedroom door closed and the volume turned down low. My room was directly across from my parents’ in 2003 and secrecy was required. I was 19 and still living at home in a small-to-medium sized town in Iowa; not yet out. Not yet sure if I needed to be out.

This was a year before the presidential campaign in the United States would become a culture war focused on the Federal Marriage Amendment, and the kickoff of more than a decade of back-and-forth laws and ballot initiatives.

And while, in America and the world, the arch of justice does bend towards justice, it is currently traversing dirt roads where cell reception is spotty and Google Maps won’t load.

The sentiment that we bend towards justice was originally expressed by Theodore Parker in a sermon in 1853.

Parker, an abolitionist a full eight years before the start of the American Civil War saw the coming breaks in the American veneer.

Fast forward and that veneer is in need of a good refurbishment.

School Boards across America have been banning books for the past five years. Here are just a few that have been banned from Public schools:

Please pick up one of those, or one of the many other banned books. As Matt Lillywhite wrote recently, “The Fastest Way To Make Kids Read A Book Is To Ban It.” I may not be a kid anymore, but I recently purchased Fahrenheit 451 for that very reason. Don’t want me to read it? You bet your ass I’m going to buy it.

Words have power.

Be powerful.

I eventually came out of the closet thanks to embracing books that are now on the banned list. I used the words of others to open up my mind and my spirit. That’s the power of these works. That’s the importance of these works.

Be you.

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