The Importance Of Banning Books

It Should Be Illegal To Ban Books

Should it be legal to ban books? Books get banned for many of reasons, such as inappropriate language, sexual content, racism, or it’s too depressing, but should we really take someone’s right away to read a book just because someone deems it too mature or too depressing to read. No, we should not. It should be illegal to ban books.

When the government bans a book it infringes on our freedom of the press and freedom of expression, which is part of our First Amendment. Fred Cate a Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law established that “the First Amendment states that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable”,

“Protecting children from the difficult realities of the world is an exercise in futility”, which means protecting children from the horrific genuineness of the world is impractical (Leigh). Nowadays children are on the internet and banning a book so your child doesn’t get exposed to bad language or any unpleasant facts about the world is pointless because they most likely already have on the internet or even from kids at school. You could always just not allow your child to read the book you're trying to ban or if anything letting them read that book could let them “open their minds, or even offer them something to identify with” (Leigh). Sherman Alexie, the author of the book The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian, said “ Almost every day, my mailbox is filled with handwritten letters from students,-teens and preteens- who have read my YA book and loved it. I have yet to receive a letter from a child somehow debilitated by the domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, poverty, sexuality, and murder contained in my book.” (Yabroff). His book had made the list of the frequently challenged books twice, and was banned from schools, in Washington, Missouri, and Wyoming, but he hasn’t had one complaint or anything from someone saying their child was affected negatively from his book, not because it is new either it has been out since