A school in Florida has banned the poem read at Joe Biden’s inauguration after a single complaint.
The unnamed parent said Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb was “not educational” and contained “indirectly (sic) hate messages”, adding that it could “cause confusion and indoctrinate students”.
Gorman, 25, said on Instagram that she was “gutted” the poem had been banned from the elementary school in Miami-Dade County.
She said: “Let’s be clear, most of the forbidden works are by authors who have struggled for generations to get on bookshelves. The majority of these censored works are by queer and non-white voices.”
Gorman said she had written the poem “so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment” and that she had received “countless letters and videos” from children inspired to write their own poetry.
“Robbing children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech,” she added.
The banning of the poem comes at a time when Governor Ron DeSantis and a number of other politicians are moving to make Florida a more restrictive and less tolerant state.
On Tuesday, The Human Rights Campaign joined the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Equality Florida in issuing travel or relocation warnings for the Sunshine State.
The LGBT+ advocacy group said it was not calling for a boycott of travel to Florida but that it wanted to highlight new laws passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature that are hostile to its community, restrict abortion access and allow Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a permit.