A Leftist California bookstore is banning J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series but remains committed to sending “queer, affirmative” titles all over the country through an anti-book banning nonprofit.
Booksmith is located in San Francisco’s renowned Haight-Ashbury neighborhood — the epicenter of the 1960s hippie counterculture and the Summer of Love. It stopped selling “Harry Potter” books after Rowling announced the creation of the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund. The fund says it “offers legal funding support to individuals and organizations fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights in the workplace, in public life, and in protected female spaces.”
Its website never mentions transgender-identifying individuals, but Booksmith claims the fund is “dedicated to removing transgender rights.”
“With this announcement, we’ve decided to stop carrying her books. We don’t know exactly what her ‘women’s fund’ will entail, but we know that we aren’t going to be a part of it,” a sign in the bookstore reads.
But ironically, Booksmith — a self-described “group of queer booksellers” — participates in the Books Not Bans program, which is dedicated to mailing “crates of queer, affirmative, necessary books all over the country,” it says, that are actively being banned.
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“These are going to people who desperately need them but who live in book deserts and communities where new book bans are rolling out daily,” the store’s announcement said. “We don’t need to tell you things are serious out there: this is a lifeline for people whose lives and wellbeing are in danger. ”
Books Not Bans, now a separate nonprofit, started at a different San Francisco bookstore, Fabulosa Books, that “[specializes] in LGBTQ+ books.”
Fabulosa Books also stopped selling Rowling’s work, saying on social media that the author “is devoting her life to nastiness.”
Books Not Bans has sent more than “2200 books to community groups around America,” according to a social media post.
One popular shipment is “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which has been at the center of fights to keep sexually explicit books away from children, The Daily Wire previously reported. The book includes graphic descriptions of anal rape and incest.
“[‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’] was recently named the most banned book in America,” Books Not Bans said in a social media post. “We’ve sent ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’ to 20 different organizations all over America.”
Rowling has drawn criticism for her commitment to protecting women and women’s spaces, but the bestselling author has refused to back down or apologize. In December, she celebrated the social media post that resulted in her becoming a global icon for women’s rights.
“Five years ago today and my only regret is that I didn’t speak out sooner,” Rowling said on social media. “To every girl and woman who’s paid a heavy price for fighting to retain their rights and boundaries, to every person striving to halt an appalling medical experiment on minors, I salute you. We will win.”