Many on the left cry that conservatives are engaging in Nazi-esque book banning. However, parents see efforts to raise questions about explicit books in school classrooms and libraries not as malicious bans, but as efforts to protect children from dangerous, inappropriate, and pornographic reading material.
Jay P. Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation looked into claims made by PEN America, a leader in the anti-book challenge, pro-sexualized reading material for children narrative.
Greene found that PEN America’s claims that thousands of books were banned from schools were lies:
It is simply false that 2,532 books were removed from schools during the 2021-2022 school year. We know this is false because we examined online card catalogues and found that 74% of the books PEN America identified as banned from school libraries are actually listed as available in the catalogues of those school districts. In many cases we could see that copies of those books are currently checked out and in use by students.
PEN America and other proponents of the false book-banning narrative like to argue that book bans target racial minorities and those in the LGBTQ community. Unsurprisingly, the current presidential administration has also bought into this lie.
Earlier this month, the White House announced plans to combat what it claims to be censorship in public schools and “address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students.” A book ban coordinator at the U.S. Department of Education will warn schools that book bans can violate federal civil rights laws, according to President Biden’s domestic policy chief Neera Tanden. Taden believes that questioning sexually-explicit books for children impacts the LGBTQ community:
In too many parts of our country, LGBTQ Americans are being targeted for who they are, and that, simply put, is discrimination…
Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to stigma and isolation.
Parents are the best judge of what is and is not appropriate for their children, so parents questioning or flagging worrisome classroom and library books, particularly books that detail graphic sexual material, are justified. Reasonable people can agree that some books, such as those that illustrate sexual acts, should not be available to children.
Yet, these types of books are exactly what the Left wants to ensure school children have unfettered access to.
PEN America, an organization that brands itself as supporting free expression, admits that nearly 25% of the banned books in their index “detail sexual experiences between characters.”
The graphic subject matter of many of these “banned books” makes it clear that bans are justified as a measure to protect the innocence of children. However, “bans” are often fabricated and not actually in place by school districts. With some simple fact-checking, a team of researchers was able to debunk claims of book banning and censorship in public schools across the country.
The interesting thing is that book ban attempts driven by the progressive left regularly happen in our country. They often attempt to silence or scare into submission dissenting viewpoints that offer thoughtful perspectives on controversial issues.
In 2020, Target pulled Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage, which examined the startling uptick in the number of teen girls identifying as transgender from its shelves. Similarly, Amazon stopped selling Ryan Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement in 2020.
In the world of book banning, there is a clear and undeniable slant. Progressive activists want your children to be exposed to pornography in schools and libraries, and they want you as far away from these decisions as possible.