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September 22-28 is Banned Books Week, an annual event organized by the American Library Association (ALA) to bring together “the entire book community – librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types – in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.” That sounds perfectly unobjectionable until you realize that Banned Books Week 2024 is actually about the Progressive “book community” uniting to push the normalization of gender ideology and the breakdown of any community standard for obscenity.
Launched in 1982, the event ostensibly is designed to bring national attention to the ongoing threat of censorship, but in fact the focus behind it today is to demonize parents and Right-wing politicians as fascists and book burners for expressing concern about schoolchildren being exposed to shockingly pornographic books available in school libraries. The truth is that not one of those parents or politicians is calling for a book ban – all of the challenged books are merely a click away on Amazon or stocked in local bookstores – but merely to keep this unsuitably adult material out of the hands of children.
But the woke Left does not want parents to have any say in the indoctrination – er, education – of their children, because the Marxist way is to target impressionable young generations with propaganda that drives a wedge between them and their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Cultural Marxist activists posing as educators and librarians are currently engaged in an unprecedented campaign to instill a sexual consciousness in children as young as pre-schoolers, and to confuse them about the nature of masculinity and femininity, as part of the Marxist assault on the nuclear family.
The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with bans or challenges in libraries and schools. As the ALA explains, “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.” Revealingly, the ALA considers “any reduction in access to library materials based on an individual or group’s believe [sic] that they are harmful or offensive” to be “an act of censorship.” [Emphasis added]
Last year, the ALA documented a record 4,240 challenged book titles—a 65% surge over 2022 numbers. What might account for that surge? Well, those of you who keep up with the accelerated rise of queer theory, drag queen culture, and the transgender movement will not be surprised to learn that nearly half – 47% – of those titles “represent[ed] the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals.”
In fact, of the Top Ten challenged book titles, seven were challenged for “LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit”: Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Flamer by Mike Curato, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, and Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan. Let it be noted that these books are not merely “claimed to be sexually explicit” but are sexually explicit.
Of the remaining three – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, and Sold by Patricia McCormick – all were also challenged for sexual explicitness. So it seems that all ten were challenged not over some ideological or political objection but because of their inappropriateness for young readers. In fact, it is the Left’s push to make these books available for schoolchildren that is ideologically and politically driven.
The ALA, of course, is yet another cultural institution captured by the far Left and steered toward a Marxist political agenda. It is currently run by President Carolyn Hohl, whose “vision” for ALA is brimming with woke blather like “sustainable,” “welcoming,” and “equitable,” but doesn’t actually offer a specific vision for libraries except to promise that they will “move towards garnering a deep understanding of intersectionality as introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw.” Crenshaw is the Critical Race Theorist known for introducing and developing “intersectional theory,” the study of overlapping social identities under systems of oppression.
So Hohl’s “vision” for the nation’s library system is that it will function as a neo-Marxist, identity politics institution set in opposition to what is perceived to be America’s bigoted, oppressive power structures. Got it.
Hohl’s presidency follows on the heels of last year’s ALA president, avowed radical Emily Drabinski, who crowed after her election, “I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is the president-elect of the ALA. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity!” So it’s no surprise that the ALA would use Banned Books Week to push a transgressive agenda to dismantle America’s Judeo-Christian morality and bourgeois sensibilities.
President Hohl has stated, “We know people don’t like being told what they are allowed to read, and we’ve seen communities come together to fight back and protect their libraries and schools from the censors.” On the contrary, what people don’t like is having their children exposed to literal pornography – heterosexual or otherwise – in school libraries, but when those people raise their concerns at school board meetings, they are deemed domestic terrorists by the Department of Homeland Security, a law enforcement branch which, under the far Left Biden-Harris administration, targets its political enemies instead of addressing real world terrorist threats like the potential ones streaming over our open southern border.
Americans have a reflexive resistance to the idea of censorship – we are the only country with the First Amendment, after all. But make no mistake: Banned Books Week 2024 is not about protecting important literature like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath from government suppression. It is about promoting the divisive, corrosive agenda of gender ideology among children – against the will of their parents – who are far too immature and malleable to be exposed to sexually explicit material.
Again, contrary to the shrill accusations from Democrat leaders and their complicit media allies, no parent or politician is calling for these pornographic books to be removed from bookstores or Amazon. Challenging the placement of obscenity in school libraries is not censorship or banning, much less book burning – it is simply a reasonable demand to keep such books age-appropriate. The only reason one could be against such a commonsense community standard is if one has sinister designs – sexual or ideological or both – on other people’s kids. That’s called grooming.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
Liberal Democrats will only allow books like meet their narrow minded views like those written by leftists and revisionists
why aren’t people calling for pornographic books to be banned? No decent people really need to read such filth, it poisons the mind.
Agree, 100%!
The level of EVIL these people go to is just astounding to this 63 year old woman. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I can tell you that the damage lasts a lifetime. Thankfully, gratefully, I found help in my early thirties after my life was completely wrecked from the addictions I used to run away from the intense shame that wasn’t even mine. Kids today, having grown up with the internet, have already seen far more evil than they should have without THIS AGENDA being shoved down their throats. Parents MUST stand together with an unequivocal NO!!
PLEASE, watch artclubmovie.com to see just how widespread and insidious the issue is.
Kathy, I know personally the experience and burden-bearing of shame that does not belong to you. I also was sexualized and abused in my innocence.
And you are right, it never goes away. The scars of that experience are laid down permanently. Nevertheless, there is healing. And we can, in turn, use our own terrible experience to help others similarly afflicted.
2 Corinthians 1: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
The Left accusing others of banning books seems to be a constant refrain these days. Yet arguably that is projection. Perhaps we should consider that when the Left promotes certain books, it is de facto banning other books. How? In essence, the classics become the bill payer. They are no longer purchased by educational institutions, promoted to students, nor taught. So, arguably it is Western Civilization that in the end appears to be banned, not postmodern culture. Something to ponder.
Excellent article, Mr. Tapson. Thank you.
Good point.
The same weasels that cry over the no-brainer of keeping smut off of grammar school book shelves, have a growing list of literature they want destroyed – not just banned.
Animal Farm, 1984, Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, to name a few, must be removed.
A Bible is to be dumped in the trash; literally done by teachers in the past. (We both know that’d never happen to the Quran.)
Long ago, a staple in elementary classrooms was the New England Primer. It used a verse of scripture for examples to describe letters of the alphabet.
Today, the wisdom of the NEA is have Gender Queer read to 1st graders by Transfilth in fishnet stockings.
That’s my first thought on seeing this crap, that they started the book banning with the classics and the bible. They’re the ones that rewrite books they don’t ban, and the push racist and sexualized garbage.
As much as I enjoyed and made book reports on Orwell’s 1984 and the Animal Farm as a sophomore in high school, I believe the left has been using these books as instruction manuals and I fear much of this was instigated through communists infiltrators. There used to be an effort to expose them back when I was a teenager but now they are the left trying to take over our country. I’m remembering a line from Indiana Jones, “try reading books instead of burning them”.
Yes, if I remember correctly, Orwell even described the sexualization of children in 1984. Ironically, his statue is in front of the head office of the BBC!
If sex were not such a powerful steering wheel to steer us to destruction, Satan would not waste his time perverting it and using it to destroy us.
Profoundly stated.
Simple question for the ALA.
Would they be open about a book such as Mein Kampf in the library? To the people challenging these books, they are as offensive as Mein Kampf. Keep in mind, the only people that would likely argue for Mein Kampf to be in a library are Jew hating Islamic groups that support them. They are all repugnant. But you are correct, in that this is all about cultural marxism and grooming children. It is quite sick.
I got a copy of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto by going to a college bookstore, so yes, Mein Kampf in a school library would be par for the course to the liberal fool.
Given the current crop of fools chanting “From the river to the sea”, it wouldn’t surprise either of us to see “Mein Kampf” proudly displayed in the near future.
(The book “I Rigoburta Menchu”, a proven fraud, is required purchase for elective courses to this day.)
College students that protest aren’t there to learn; they’re there to prove they’re easily manipulated.
So if they’re informed that “two legs better” they’ll bleat accordingly, and also if told to embrace & defend “Mein Kampf”, they’d do it.
I bought those kinds of books cheap and used. Mein kampf is packed away in the attic, due to shelf space and current usefulness. But nietzsche, marx, engels, mao, and alinsky are on the shelf right next to Locke, the Founding Fathers, and bunch of others more to my thinking. I have to refer to leftists from time to time, but that doesn’t mean I like or agree with them. It’s a matter of knowing my enemy.
I read mein kampf, marx, engels, mao, alinsky, and a bunch of other people I profoundly disagree with. It helped me formulate arguments against their ideas. My father and mother had innoculated me early (by 6 or 7) against not only those, but the mentality behind them. Then no matter how they dress up the words, they can be seen through.
I think they should be in libraries. But writing porn for children is just disgusting, wrong, and serves no purpose but to confuse and damage the child.
Isn’t the President of the ALA “Cindy” Hohl, not “Carolyn”?
It seems bizarre that shy awkward bespectacled bookworms Marianne, the librarians, became perverted purveyors of pornographic filth to children. It makes you believe in demonic possession!
What a world!
I remember the NAACP tried to ban Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn from school libraries because of the racial attitudes of the time. Suddenly these liberal groups are against book banning in schools?!
No. Flaming leftists are still all in for it.
Any uplifting material written by evil white European Christian males is prime for the chopping block.
(As an added bonus, Shakespeare’s portrait was removed from Penn University – among others.)
However: any smut written by low-octane, grifting fools is considered required reading . . . at least as long as it furthers America’s decline.
Why do these gay propagandists, who spend so much effort trying to ‘prove’ that President Lincoln was homosexual, get so angry at me when I point out that Hilary Clinton is a lesbian?
It’s particularly ironic you mentioned To Kill A Mockingbird because I still remember a few years ago, during the BLM movement, that the Burbank Unified School District in L.A. banned the book because some parents thought it promoted a “white savior trope” as if it’s somehow problematic that a white lawyer in the South during the 1930s is the only person who would defend a black man who was wrongly convicted of murder because he believed it was the right thing to do.
In my experience of reading Japanese comics (manga), the US publishers usually have their own ratings systems to determine the appropriateness of the books for certain age groups. The manga aimed at mature readers are usually labeled with a Parental advisory for explicit content. Probably the best solution for this is to put a similar rating system for regular books, and the books with explicit content would be put in a restricted section that requires a parent’s signature on a permission slip. It’s not perfect, but at least it prevents kids from stumbling onto inappropriate books without a parent’s permission.
I miss the times when everyone had the decency and class to keep their sexuality to themselves instead of shoving it in all our faces constantly.