Speaking Loudly

I’ve wanted to speak loudly, but I haven’t known what to say. I still don’t, to be honest. This is what I do know:

• I love Jesus
• I hate book banning
• There are people who need to read SPEAK that haven’t read it yet

And those three points are what this post comes down to. I went on Twitter this morning to find the #speakloudly campaign. The cliffnotes version of the story is that Dr. Wesley Scroggins wrote an opinion piece saying that SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson should be banned from schools because, you know, the rape scenes are soft-core porn.

Say it with me: What?!

I’m a Christian and my faith is my life. Really, my faith is why I have life. I can’t stand it when people use Christianity as a reason to ban books because, well, it’s wrong.

Seriously, have you read the Bible? It’s messy. But, it has to show the sin to show the consequences of it. Honestly, I think that’s what most YA books do. SPEAK does not advocate rape; it shows what devastating consequences it has on the victim, and encourages the victim to speak out about it.

Problems won’t go away if we stop writing about them.

But they might if we start.

What if no one wrote about rape? What if no one talked about rape? It would still happen, and I’m willing to bet it would happen more than it does now.

So, let’s write about it, and all the other messy things in the world. Let’s talk about them. Let’s speak loudly. Maybe then, we can change things.

I sound naïve. I’m not. Change is slow. But, change will stop if we stop. We can’t silence the voices that are speaking loudly. We need to join them.