[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

“Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights” is the theme of this year’s 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 2025 (October 5-11) 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 own 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 book is banned when it is entirely removed from a collection in response to a formal or informal challenge.” Revealingly, the ALA considers “any reduction in access to library materials based on an individual or group’s belief  that they are harmful or offensive” to be “an act of censorship.” [Emphasis added]

In 2024, the ALA documented the third highest number of book challenges since tracking began in 1990, but a decrease from 2023, when a record high 1,247 attempts were reported. ALA recorded attempts to remove 2,452 unique titles in 2024, about 9 times the average of 273 titles challenged annually during 2001–2020. What might account for that dramatic surge in recent years? 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 the most common justifications for those challenges were “claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.”

In fact, of the Top Ten challenged book titles of last year, all ten were challenged for “LGBTQIA+ content” and/or “claimed to be sexually explicit”: Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Flamer by Mike Curato, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, Sold by Patricia McCormick, 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. 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 Sam Helnick, a woman who goes by the grammatically incorrect personal pronouns “they/them” – a dead giveaway that this person (or persons, in this case) is a proudly woke, radical activist.

Helnick replaces former President Cindy Hohl, whose “vision” for ALA brimmed with woke blather like “sustainable,” “welcoming,” and “equitable.” 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 raised their concerns at school board meetings during the far Left Biden administration, they were deemed domestic terrorists by the Department of Homeland Security.

Hohl’s presidency followed on the heels of the previous 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!”

With this kind of lineup of cultural Marxists running the organization, 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, and to sexualize our children at the youngest possible age. It’s also telling that ragingly campy actor-activist George Takei, a relentless Left-wing critic of the MAGA movement, will serve as honorary chair of this year’s event.

Americans have a reflexive resistance to the idea of censorship – we are the only country with a First Amendment, after all. But make no mistake: Banned Books Week in recent years is not about protecting important literature like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath from government suppression. It is about promoting – against the will of parents – the divisive, corrosive agenda of gender ideology among children 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 – it is simply a reasonable demand to keep children from being exposed to age-inappropriate materials. 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.