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An unexpected alliance has formed between conservative parents and Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan.
The groups have come together to stand up against the public school boards that are supplying their children with ‘explicit’ LGBTQ reading material.
A school board meeting was disrupted this week when hundreds of protestors denouncing books with LGBTQ content poured into the Dearborn Public Schools administration building.
Some of the titles concerned parents are coming together to object to include Push, The Lovely Bones, This Book Is Gay and Flamer – all titles that confront rape, explicit sex and sexuality.
Parents, many Arab-American, attended a Dearborn, Michigan school board meeting Thursday to voice displeasure with the sexually explicit and LGBTQ reading material their children have access to at the school system’s public libraries
Hass Cash, a Dearborn resident and community activist, talks with community members during the Dearborn Board of Education meeting in Dearborn on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. The meeting became so unruly that it was rescheduled for later in the week at a space that could accommodate more people
Community members held signs that voiced disapproval with the sorts of texts local children can check out of their schools’ libraries
Several of the books parents have asked to be banned from the Dearborn, Michigan public school system. Each of them depicts rape, homosexuality and sex and local parents have taken issue with their children’s access to the texts
The Republican candidate for Michigan attorney general Matthew Deperno attended the meeting and commented on the surprising united front between conservatives and Arabs.
‘I think you’ll find these are people with deeply held religious beliefs. We have to stand up for the First Amendment and people’s religious beliefs and I think you’re probably seeing a shift in the Republican Party,’ he said.
Local affiliate Fox 2 said the presence of the two groups ‘was a nod to the unexpected alliance of sorts between conservatives and many in the Arab American community as their interests overlap on this issue.’
The majority, according to the outlet, of those who attended the Thursday night school board meeting were Arabic.
One individual in attendance at the meeting expressed his support for how the GOP has been handling the issue by bolstering the rights of parents.
‘What the Republican Party has done, is they stood on this issue firmly and they stood with parents firmly. We’re waiting for Democrats counterparts to also stand with us on this issue,’ he said.
Another attendee slammed progressive Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, calling her ‘the only person that’s behind this….Do not vote for Rashida Tlaib!’
The audience reportedly cheered the criticism.
Some counter protestors who support a robust LGBTQ-centric curriculum spoke at the meeting as well. Several of them worked within the school sytem
Dylan Wegela, a teacher at a Dearborn high school, holds the Progress Pride Flag during a Dearborn Public Schools board meeting inside Stout Middle School in Dearborn on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022
Arab Americans, of whom there is a significant population in Dearborn, Michigan, made up the majority of protestors. Some conservative parents joined as well to form an unlikely political union
Hundreds of protestors descended upon the meeting, such that the original Monday location had to be changed when the board reconvened Thursday to accommodate the numbers
Some counter protestors said they were themselves LGBTQ youths at public schools who would have liked to know about the resources (including literature) currently available to students when they were young
David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University, said, ‘Politics can make strange bedfellows, and this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen this. I could definitely see this issue and this alliance pushing Arab American turnout up simply because that community is now energized.’
He added that he believes the union will be shot lived given the conservative faction’s general support for former President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban.
At a previous iteration of the school board meeting held earlier in the week, also in Dearborn, a separate batch of protestors carried signs that read, ‘Keep your porno books to yourself,’ ‘If democracy matters, we’re the majority,’ and ‘Protect the children.’
School board members were shouted over and booed when attendees were told their public comments would be limited to three minutes.
According to the Washington Post, local Muslim leaders had encouraged people to attend the meeting to oppose the presence of LGBTQ books in public schools.
‘Some of those books promote pornography. Some of them promote homosexuality. We don’t need this,’ prominent Muslim leader Iman Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini told the Detroit Free Press.
Prior to the school board meeting, the district released a new policy that allows parents to block their school-aged children from checking certain items out of the library or prevent them entirely from using the district’s library.
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