[Glenn Greenwald] The Ongoing Death of Free Speech: Prominent ACLU Lawyer Cheers Suppression of a New Book

It is nothing short of horrifying, but sadly also completely unsurprising, to see an ACLU lawyer proclaim his devotion to “stopping the circulation of [a] book” because he regards its ideas as wrong and dangerous. There are, always have been, and always will be people who want to stop books from being circulated: by banning them, burning them, pressuring publishing houses to rescind publishing contracts or demanding corporations refuse to sell them. But why would someone with such censorious attitudes, with a goal of suppressing ideas with which they disagree, choose to go to work for the ACLU of all places?

Sometime on Friday, Strangio deleted that second tweet without comment, and then noted he was locking his account. In response to a series of questions I sent Strangio about his position, he told me that he had read the book over the summertime and found it repellent. He said he deleted the tweet because “ there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childcare” and “it was supposed to be a cheeky response to Bari [Weiss] not something to be taken on its own terms without that context.” He told me, however, that the book is dangerous:

The book and the arguments contained within it are fueling a wave of bills in state legislatures to criminalize health care for trans youth including through felony bans on the provision of care and forced outing of trans youth by school officials (an actual serious First Amendment concern).