Missouri candidate burning books reflects censorship, hatred
A Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state, Valentina Gomez, posted a video on social media burning LGBTQ+ literature with a flamethrower. This act has been criticized as encouraging violence against LGBTQ+ people. The current secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, has a reputation for being extremely anti-LGBTQ+, favoring book bans, and criminalizing librarians. PEN America ranks Missouri as one of the worst states for book censorship, after Texas and Florida. This reflects a trend among the far right to try to remove LGBTQ+ topics from national culture, which has been challenged by civil libertarians and LGBTQ+ rights activists as a violation of the First Amendment.
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