**Reader Discretion Strongly Advised**

How many times have conservatives heard “progressives” claim that the controversial, obscene material they want taught to children is “age-appropriate”? Now, how many times have your heard conservatives respond by demanding to know specifically what criteria are used to determine “appropriateness”—age or any other kind? How many times have you heard conservatives demand to know specifically who socially constructed the criteria used to determine appropriateness and specifically which teacher suggested that a controversial, obscene book or play be taught?

Taxpayers are entitled to know the criteria, names of creators of criteria, and names of teachers who choose controversial, obscene material. Concealment facilitates unethical behavior among teachers and breeds distrust among taxpayers. Transparency fosters trust and accountability. Government school teachers who are paid by the public want absolute autonomy and absolute anonymity, and that is why we now have adults introducing obscene material to other people’s children.

As an example, here are several writing prompts for high school students in Hudson, Ohio. These prompts prompt children to use their imaginations to focus on sexual immorality and violence:

• Write a sex scene you wouldn’t show your mom. Rewrite the sex scene into one you would let your mom read.

• You have just been caught in bed by a jealous spouse. How will you talk your way out of this?

• Write a sermon for a beloved preacher who has been caught in a sex scandal.

• You are a serial killer. What tv shows are on your DVR list? Why?

• Describe a time when you wanted to orgasm but couldn’t.

• Write an X-rated Disney scenario.

No worries, rationalize supporters, these are just a few prompts from among the hundreds offered in a book of prompts that taxpayers subsidized. And anyway, such prompts appeal to teens and gets their creative juices flowing—or so rationalize the creepy adults who eye little children with bad intent.

(As an aside, weren’t those Hudson, Ohio teachers able to come up with writing prompts on their own? Isn’t that what they’re paid for?)

Many parents don’t realize that appealing to the sensibilities and appetites of adolescents assumed a dominant place in the selection process of English teachers decades ago. There’s another word for capitulating to the tastes of adolescents: it’s called pandering.

Schools should teach those texts that students will likely not read on their own. Schools should teach those texts that are intellectually challenging and offer insight, wisdom, beauty, and truth. Schools should avoid those that are highly polemical, blasphemous, and vulgar.

These writing prompts embody the perverse obsession with sex that many authors who write Young Adult (YA) novels share, that change-agents teach, and that government schools purchase with limited taxpayer funds.

Here are some quotes from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is found in most middle school libraries and recommended and taught in many classrooms:

• I guess I forgot to mention in my last letter that it was Patrick who told me about masturbation. I guess I forgot to tell you how often I do it now, which is a lot. … I started using blankets, but then the blankets hurt, so I started using pillows, but then the pillows hurt, so I went back to [the] normal [way].

• And the boy kept working up the girl’s shirt, and as much as she said no, he kept working it. After a few minutes, she stopped protesting, and he pulled her shirt off, and she had a white bra on with lace. … Pretty soon, he took off her bra and started to kiss her breasts. And then he put his hand down her pants, and she started moaning. … He reached to take off her pants, but she started crying really hard, so he reached for his own. He pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees. After a few minutes, the boy pushed the girl’s head down, and she started to kiss his p****. She was still crying. Finally, she stopped crying because he put his p**** in her mouth, and I don’t think you can cry in that position.

• When most people left, Brad and Patrick went into Patrick’s room. They had sex for the first time that night. I don’t want to go into detail about it, because it’s pretty private stuff, but I will say that Brad assumed the role of the girl in terms of where you put things.

• One night Patrick took me to this park where men go and find each other. Patrick told me that if I didn’t want to be bothered by anyone that I should just not make eye contact. He said that eye contact is how you agree to fool around anonymously. Nobody talks. They just find places to go. After a while, Patrick saw someone he liked.

In the face of criticism, those who rationalize teaching obscene, pro-“LGBTQ+” novels to adolescents roll their condescending eyes and call those who object to such material it prudes who take words out of context. But there is no context that renders graphic sex acceptable in texts purchased with public funds and taught to minor children.

Here are some more out-of-context quotes, these from the novel Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison—another YA book in school libraries–a coming-of-age novel in which the protagonist begins to feel fulfilled only after he embraces a homosexual identity and which includes obscenity like “f**k” and “s**t” on virtually every page:

• “G**damn-f**king-c**t-f**k-s**t-ass-f**ker!” I yelled.

• “What if I told you I touched another guy’s d**k? … “What if I told you I s****ed it?” … “I was ten years old, but it’s true. I put Doug Goble’s d**k in my mouth.” … “I was in fourth grade. It was no big deal.” … “He s***ed mine, too.” … “And you know what? … “It wasn’t terrible.”

I wonder if a coming-of-age novel in which a young adult who experiences unchosen homoerotic attraction finds fulfillment once he rejects homoerotic relationships could get published, positively reviewed, and purchased for school libraries.

Saturday Oct. 2, 2021 marked the end of another “Banned Books Week” sponsored by the sanctimonious, hypocritical, leftist American Library Association (ALA) that regularly violates its own principles of intellectual freedom and has no principles regarding morality.

The ALA makes this disturbing statement:

Library policies and procedures that effectively deny minors equal and equitable access to all library resources available to other users violate the Library Bill of Rights. The American Library Association opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users.

Apparently, to members of the ALA, even five-year-olds should be free to access the porn available on library computers, in books, and in magazines.

The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom claims to oppose the proscription of materials based on “partisan disapproval”:

Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

If that’s the case, then why are there so few YA novels that depict homosexuality as unhealthy or depict cross-sex identification as disordered?

The ALA tries to divert attention from this obvious hypocrisy by appealing to its own “Collection Development Policies.” But they can’t do their dirty censorship deeds alone. It requires the collusion of publishing companies, book review organizations, and libraries.

“Collection Development Policies”—created by leftists—are used to select which books to purchase. These policies establish what will be considered in selecting which books to buy. Books are chosen based on the “Reputation and qualifications of the author, publisher or producer, with preference generally given to titles vetted in the editing and publishing industry.”

And guess what—leftists control the publishing companies and professional review journals on whom librarians depend for determining which books they will purchase. It’s a nice circular set-up that enables leftists to conceal their bias and book-banning.

That may explain why Wheaton North High School in Wheaton, Illinois carries the obscene comic book “graphic novel” Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe but doesn’t carry either When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson or Irreparable Damage by Wall Street Journal reporter Abigail Shrier.

And it likely explains why school and community libraries all around the country carry the picture book I Am Jazz and numerous other picture books affirming cross-dressing in children. But how many carry the books I’m Glad God Made Me a Girl by Denise Shick, whose father began masquerading as a woman when Ms. Shick was a child, thereby causing her untold suffering.

What becomes obscured in all these discussions of book-banning or selection criteria is the egregious offense of using public money to subsidize curricula and activities that undermine many taxpayers’ deepest beliefs and morals.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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Written by Patience Griswold

This week is Banned Books Week, a week that the American Library Association claims “brings 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, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” However, in a year that saw major corporations engaging in viewpoint discrimination, two books that faced bans this year for daring to question the transgender agenda, When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson and Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, were notably absent from this year’s “Challenged book list.”

As Thomas Spence, President of Regnery Publishing noted, Banned Books Week is proving itself to be nothing more than a “gimmicky promotion [that] caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.”

Earlier this year, Amazon removed Anderson’s book on transgenderism without any warning or explanation. When they finally broke their silence, they doubled down, insisting that When Harry Became Sally, which had been listed on their website for three years without any issues, violated their standards.

However, as Anderson pointed out, Amazon can’t argue that they simply don’t sell books that they disagree with — if that were the case, then they have some explaining to do when it comes to many of the books that they do choose to sell. “[T]he way that they’ve marketed themselves to customers is that they sell all books worth reading, not just books they agree with,” said Anderson. Nor is Amazon’s argument that they won’t sell it because they won’t sell books that refer to transgenderism as mental illness compelling considering that the only times in the book where transgenderism is referred to as a mental illness are direct quotes, one from a man who identifies as transgender, and the other from University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins.

Additionally, with 40 pages of notes reflecting the rigorous academic research behind the book, and endorsements from leaders in the field, no one can reasonably accuse Anderson of cheap arguments or shoddy research. What he can be accused of is challenging the transgender agenda, and for that, his book has been banned by the world’s largest online retailer.

Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage received similar treatment from Amazon when its ads were removed last June, although Amazon has not removed the book itself. Target, on the other hand, pulled Irreversible Damage from shelves after a single complaint from an anonymous Twitter user. After briefly reinstating it, Target quietly removed the book again, along with The End of Gender by Dr. Deborah Soh, another book that critiques the transgender agenda.

The theme for this year’s Banned Books Week is “Books unite us. Censorship divides us.” As such, one would think that Banned Books Week would take the time to highlight the censorship coming from major corporations, but the organizations behind Banned Books Week have remained conveniently silent on this issue. Instead, proponents of Banned Books Week use the week as an excuse to celebrate increasingly explicit content filling library shelves under the name of free speech while conveniently turning a blind eye to the egregious viewpoint discrimination that takes place when authors challenge radical gender ideology.

If Banned Books Week is really about celebrating free speech and giving a voice to unpopular points of view, then using it to push an agenda that enjoys the support of top elected officials, woke corporations while ignoring the censorship of dissenters is hardly the way to do that. For my part, I’m celebrating Banned Books Week by revisiting When Harry Became Sally and Irreversible Damage.

Patience Griswold received her BA from Bethlehem College and Seminar and writes from the greater Twin Cities area.
This article was originally published by the Minnesota Family Council.

This September 19-25, 2021, the displays in public libraries for the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week are going to be overflowing with banned books. In addition to Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally, and Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage, there will be not one, not two, not three, but SIX Dr. Seuss books.

Historically the American Library Association has deemed a book “banned” if a few parents asked for it to be removed from the children’s section to another section of the library. Such a “banning” throws them into a tizzy after which they fall onto their fainting couches. Just imagine how they must feel now that book-burners managed to get the publisher of Dr. Seuss’s books to stop publishing SIX of them. Get those guy, gal, and sexually ambiguous librarians some smelling salts STAT.

What, you may be wondering, did Dr. Seuss write or draw that led to today’s book-burners—also known in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 as Firemen (Gotta burn that book next year. “Firemen” definitely hurts somebody’s feelings).

One of the allegedly offensive books is If I Ran the Zoo in which young Gerald McGrew imagines traveling the world to collect exotic never-before-seen animals from faraway places for his zoo. The drawings most intensely drawing leftist ire are one of Asian characters with yellow skin and slanted eyes wearing traditional Asian clothes and using chopsticks, and the other is a drawing of two Africans wearing loin cloths and nose rings as many members of African tribes have historically done.

There is also a drawing of Persian princes wearing Persian garb and one of a Russian soldier with a big bushy beard wearing a Russian military uniform and carrying a bird called the “Russian Palooski whose headski is redski.” But those stereotypes don’t seem to bother leftists all that much.

CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza said this about the decision by the publisher of Dr. Seuss’s books to cease publication of six books—a decision compelled by leftist Firemen:

While six of his books will no longer be published, the remaining three dozen or so will still be on the bookshelves. That isn’t a cancellation.

Well, the cancellation of the publication of the six books actually is a cancellation.

Should a society censor books? Is burning a book written in 1950 because of several questionable images the proper response? Who will decide which books should be burned? Who will decide which hurt feelings render book-burning necessary? Are the faux-hurt feelings of leftist adults in academia sufficient justification for book-burning?

Leftists whine endlessly about stereotyping, suggesting that stereotypes are intrinsically offensive and hurtful. In so whining, they fail to acknowledge that stereotypes emerge from and reflect real phenomena. Stereotypes do not precede and create phenomena. Humans notice differences and categorize phenomena. That’s how the human mind works.

We are expected to worship at the altar of multiculturalism, but multiculturalism is based on the reality that there are distinctives that characterize different people groups. From those differences emerge “stereotypes.” And storytelling often depends on depicting characters that represent the diverse types of groups we observe. That is to say, storytelling depends on stereotypes.

One could argue that the wildly popular television program Will and Grace and movie Black Panther are filled with stereotypes, and yet the presence of stereotypes—that is, characters that represent recognizable types—in those cases is not viewed as either insulting or degrading.

Crazy Rich Asians, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Moonstruck, Godfather, Goodfellas, Mean Girls, Boyz N the Hood, and Birdcage too are replete with stereotypes. The “types” came first.

If someone wanted to write a children’s book about a Chinese family, would it make sense to depict the family with big round blue eyes in order to avoid the “stereotype” that Chinese people have brown eyes with slanted monolids?

If we’re going to burn books based on claims that they include hurtful language directed at “authentic identities,” then we’re gonna need one colossal bonfire. Every book that describes theologically orthodox people as “homophobic” or “transphobic” for views on sexuality or marriage central to their identity as Christians needs to be burned.

Former president of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (ALA OIF), the much-revered Judith Krug, once said this in an interview:

We have gone through periods where our biggest threats have been from the left of center, where people have wanted to remove materials that did not portray, for instance, minority groups in the way that they thought minority groups should be portrayed. … If we [the ALA OIF] have an agenda, it is protection of the First Amendment.

In that same interview, Krug said something even more salient to the issue of banning the six of Dr. Seuss’s books:

[M]any years ago …  Meshach Taylor made a statement … during a panel discussion that I participated in before the opening of The Big River at the Goodman Theater. Now, The Big River is one of the stage versions of Huckleberry Finn. Meshach Taylor was playing Nigger Jim, and one of the questions that came up from the audience during this panel was, “Do you really feel that Huckleberry Finn is appropriate for young people to read? Given the name of Nigger Jim, isn’t it too embarrassing or too frightening, or doesn’t it raise specters for young people that they would be better off without?” And Meshach Taylor answered, “You don’t know how you got to where you’re at today unless you know where you came from yesterday. And if you don’t know where you came from yesterday to get to where you’re at today, you’ll never know how to go forward into tomorrow.”

Here’s an idea: Stop demanding the banning of Dr. Seuss books. Let them be published and purchased wherever books are sold. And leave all of them on library shelves right behind the drag queens reading stories to toddlers and right next to picture books about Heather’s two mommies and tutu-wearing boys. Then moms and dads can decide which books to purchase or check-out, and read to their children.

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It makes a difference!

Written by L. Brent Bozell III

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles made a confession the other day. “I banned a book,” he wrote. “Or at least I helped get it banned, which makes Banned Books Week a little awkward for me this year. Like celebrating Arbor Day by cutting down a tree.”

The book is titled “The Trigger: The Lie That Changed the World — Who Really Did It and Why.” It’s an 898-page paperback. The author, David Icke, is a longtime conspiracy kook from Britain. The publisher is also David Icke. This book is the latest example of 9/11 trutherism. In this version, the “satanic” Israeli government did it, in addition to its role in international drug running and assassinating John F. Kennedy. Charles called it “harebrained word vomit.”

He wrote to Barnes & Noble inquiring about a photo a reader sent him that showed Icke’s book on a “New Releases in Paperback 20% off” table. A day later, a spokesperson told him, “After being alerted to the content, we are removing the book from all stores.”

When asked more broadly about the national bookstore chain’s selection process involving “hate speech” purveyors, the spokesperson added, “We work to never allow content with hate speech in our stores, and in cases when something slips through, we take quick and resolute action to remove it.”

This would thrill most liberal hearts, but Charles asks the obvious question: How will Barnes & Noble determine what is “hate speech”? And is “quick and resolute action” always the wisest course?

In the spirit of Banned Books Week, Charles wonders how hard liberals would fight to defend free speech, even for a book they consider abhorrent. Would they still fight today as the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the right of neo-Nazis to march down the street in Skokie, Illinois?

There’s no need to wonder.

Charles noted that the American Library Association has a new list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books in libraries, and “the list is dominated by books that draw censure for their positive portrayal of LGBTQIA+ relationships,” such as David Levithan‘s 2013 “young adult” novel, “Two Boys Kissing.”

The book chronicles Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to participate in a 32-hour kissing marathon to set a new Guinness World Record. It has a broader theme about the dreadful toll of AIDS. Libraries and bookstores promote these tomes in Banned Books Week displays and events.

This is where Charles admirably puts his free-speech advocacy to the test:

“I can’t help noticing that no liberal tastes were harmed in the making of this list. It costs us nothing to celebrate these banned books. The whole campaign is pungent with self-satisfaction, a chance for us enlightened liberals to remind each other that we are freedom fighters.”

The American Library Association is unlikely to promote its own courage in making “harebrained word vomit” about 9/11 available in libraries. This underlines why Banned Books Week often feels like Favorite Books Week. It would be fascinating to know just how many American libraries are stocking the latest David Icke book so we could see how often it is protested by people won’t don’t want to aid the spread of his crackpottery.

Troublemakers with time on their hands could have fun compiling a list of books that libraries choose not to stock. We could host a splashy celebration of Books Librarians Hate Week. They should acknowledge that some noxious books and ideas are worth protesting or ignoring.

But you cannot celebrate free speech except for that which you want to ban.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at creators.com.

Warning: not for young readers

September 23-29 is the ominously and inaccurately named Banned Books Week established by the book-banning American Library Association (ALA) to suggest that book banning is prevalent in America and very scary.

Although the ALA named it Banned Books Week, it acknowledged in the “about” section of the Banned Books Week website that it’s not really about books that have been banned à la Fahrenheit 451 or even asked to be banned. It’s centrally about books that have been challenged, which is a horse of an entirely different and far less dark color. A book is challenged when the appropriateness of it in some context is questioned.

Of course, the book banners at the ALA hope that no one notices the book banning they do through de facto book-banning protocols called Collection Development Policies (CDPs) that coincidentally align with the “progressive” biases of many librarians. (FYI, the field of library science is decidedly not ideologically diverse; it’s dominated by “progressives.”)

Libraries use CDPs to determine which books they will purchase with their limited budgets. CDPs advise librarians to purchase only books that have been positively reviewed by two “professionally recognized” review journals. Well, guess what folks, the “professionally recognized” review journals are dominated by ideological “progressives.”

Most parents who challenge books are not requesting that they be banned. Most parents are requesting one of three things: 1. that a book be moved to an adult section of the library, 2. that a library not use its limited resources to purchase a particular book, or 3. that a publicly funded school not select a particular book to be taught. Parents are not requesting that publishing companies be prohibited from publishing book titles, that parents be prohibited from purchasing them, or that booksellers stop selling them.

“Progressive” book-banning librarians count on community members not realizing that books that are never purchased can’t be “banned.” So, when school and community libraries refuse to purchase or request books that espouse conservative beliefs about the nature and morality of, for example, homosexuality or cross-dressing, there’s no opportunity for “progressives” to “ban” books. Their “banning” is achieved prior to the purchase of books. It’s far more comprehensive. And it’s much more cunning. Through CDPs, librarians effectively ban books they don’t like (i.e., conservative books) with nary a controversial word messily spilling out into the public square. If CDPs resulted in no books being purchased that espouse liberal beliefs about sexual deviancy and confusion, you can bet your bottom dollar that ALA members would be having conniptions.

One of the purportedly “banned” books that’s been getting a lot of press lately is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie—a book taught in many 7^th-, 8^th-, and 9^th-grade public school classes. The novel is not utterly devoid of good qualities. It addresses some important issues regarding racial discrimination, poverty, conformity, inclusion, friendship, independence, and resilience, and it does so with heart and humor. But it also contains much to render it unsuitable for inclusion in public school curricula.

I want to make clear that not selecting a book to include in a school curriculum is not equivalent to book banning. If not selecting books did constitute book banning, then “progressive” English teachers and librarians are the ethical equivalent of Fahrenheit 451 firemen because they routinely engage in the non-selection of books.

The first problem with the The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is that it is written at about a fourth-grade level. Any late middle school or early high school teachers who select it reveal both a lack of confidence in the intellectual ability of their students and a willingness to acquiesce to the dumbing down of academic standards. Appealing to the emotions and baser impulses of adolescents is the last refuge of lazy, uninspiring, and unaspiring academic scoundrels.

Second, Alexie’s book contains language and ideas to which no educator should intentionally expose students. Yes, I know the tired rationalization: “This is authentic adolescent language.” This rationalization should raise some questions: If the author is justified in using such language to portray authentically adolescent culture and emotional experiences, then why aren’t students justified in using such language in school in order to be authentic and to express adequately and accurately their emotional truths? And why aren’t teachers allowed to use this kind of language, since it also represents authentic adult language and experience? In fact, society euphemistically refers to profanity and obscenity as “adult language.”

Here’s an idea to help teachers determine which novels and plays they should recommend or teach to other people’s children: If a novel or play contains language and imagery that cannot be read aloud over the public address system, used in the hallways, spoken at school board meetings, or printed in our newspapers, they should not recommend or teach it to other people’s children.

So, let’s put The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian to the test. Let’s have superintendents, principals, school board members, and students read these passages over the public address system, at an assembly, or at a school board meeting:

Excerpt 1:

Yep, that’s right, I admit that I masturbate.

I’m proud of it.
I’m good at it.
I’m ambidextrous.
If there were a Professional Masturbators League, I’d get drafted number one and make millions of dollars.

And maybe you’re thinking, “well, you really shouldn’t be talking about masturbation in public.”
Well, tough, I’m going to talk about it because EVERYBODY does it. And EVERYBODY likes it.
And if God hadn’t wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn’t have given us thumbs.
So I thank God for thumbs.

Excerpt 2:

“Hey, Chief,” Roger said. “You want to hear a joke?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Did you know that Indians are living proof that nig***s fu** buffalo?”

Excerpt 3:

I headed over to the library bathrooms because they’re usually a lot cleaner than the ones by the lunchroom. So, okay, I’m going number two, and I’m sitting on the toilet, and I’m concentrating. I’m in my Zen mode, trying to make this whole thing a spiritual experience. I read once that Gandhi was way into his own number two. I don’t know if he told fortunes or anything. But I guess he thought the condition and quality of his number two revealed the condition and quality of his life.

Excerpt 4:

“Kid, you better keep your hands out of my daughter’s panties. She’s only dating you because she knows it will piss me off. So I ain’t going to get pissed. And if I ain’t pissed then she’ll stop dating you. In the meantime, you just keep your trouser snake in your trousers and I won’t have to punch you in the stomach.”

Excerpt 5:

“Arnold, please go with Miss Warren.”

I gathered up my books and followed Miss Warren out into the hallway. I was a little worried. I wondered if I’d done anything wrong….”

“What’s going on, Miss Warren?” I asked.

She suddenly started crying….

She hugged me hard. And I have to admit that it felt pretty dang good. Miss Warren was, like fifty years old, but she was still pretty hot…. So I sort of, er, physically reacted to her hug. And the thing is, Miss Warren was hugging me so tight that I was pretty sure she could feel my, er, physical reaction. I was kind of proud, you know?

Ah, literature at its finest, most sublime, and inspiring.

In Fahrenheit 451, it is the “hedonistic, anti-intellectual” forces in society that are burning books. Today, the hedonistic, anti-intellectuals in charge of public schools are the ones exploiting books to promote those ideas and images that appeal to our hedonistic, anti-intellectual impulses while concomitantly banning books that are more intellectually challenging and morally uplifting .

Many “educators” attempt to justify the inclusion of Alexie’s book by citing its National Book Award. This common strategy should raise several more important questions: What were the criteria used for determining the winning novel? How many people served on the committee that awarded the honor to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian? And what were the ideological leanings of those who made that decision?

This justification calls for a serious, open, and honest examination of the ideological monopoly that controls academia and the elite world of the arts and that has resulted in censorship of conservative perspectives. To offer as justification for teaching a text its garnering of literary prizes or ALA approval without acknowledging that those who award the prizes or who belong to the ALA are generally of the same ideological bent is an exercise in sophistry.

What school committees, departments, administrations, boards, the ALA, the National Education Association, and organizations that award literary prizes desperately need is the one form of diversity about which they are least concerned and to which they are least committed: ideological diversity.

Furthermore, this justification represents a common fallacy called an “argument from authority” which relies on the word of an expert or authority rather than on evidence. The fallacy goes something like this: This teacher made the decision to teach this text, and he is has won a Golden Apple Award, or the school board has decided to allow this book to be taught because it won a  National Book Award. The fallacy lies in the fact that honors can be awarded based on specious criteria, and teaching abilities do not guarantee sound judgment. Really smart people can make really chuckleheaded decisions.

In the extensive body of literature from which English teachers can choose, surely they can find books that address substantive issues without resorting to adolescent potty humor, sexual vulgarity, and the use of language that civilized people do not use in private or public.

Parents who object to the inclusion of texts in libraries, sections of libraries, or classrooms due to obscene language, sexuality, or highly controversial messages are not engaging in inappropriate censorship. All educators evaluate curricular materials for objectionable content, including language, sexuality, and controversial themes. The irony is that when librarians and teachers decide not to select a text due to these elements, the choice constitutes an exercise in legitimate text-selection, but when conservative parents engage in it, they are tarred with the label of censor and book banner.

Parents should doubt the veracity and fitness for their roles of any librarians, teachers, administrators, or school board members who claim they will never take into account the nature and extent of profanity, obscenity, sexuality, and controversial themes when choosing texts.

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The American Library Association (ALA) has revealed that it has not yet reached the nadir of ethical corruption. Through its Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) division, the Intellectual Freedom Committee, which promotes “continuing education programs” for children, just wrote this (you better be sitting down):

Interested in bringing Drag Queen Storytime to your library? ALSC Committee Members received tips for optimizing success from library pioneers who have already done it.  We also had the chance to meet a Drag Queen who talked about the value of offering this program, including fostering empathy, tolerance, creativity, imagination and fun.

I kid you not. Librarians who have brought in deviant entertainers to captivate the innocent imaginations of toddlers are “pioneers”? Think “brood of vipers.”

This feckless ALA statement raises questions: Should we foster in children empathy for those who choose to engage in transvestism? Should we tolerate adults who expose children to transvestism? Should we encourage children to view men who masquerade as women as “fun”?

Every year, the ALA sponsors the laughably named “Banned Books Week” (this year, Sept. 23-29, 2018) during which self-righteous, dissembling librarians foment “book-banning” paranoia. The ALA fancies itself a bastion of liberty and arch-defender of the free exchange of ideas. In reality, the ALA is most notable for being a censorious, partisan purveyor of perverse leftist ideas about sexuality. The ALA can’t seem to find an idea too perverse for children and can’t discern an age too young to be exposed to perversion.

The ALA pursues its hysteria-fomenting goal chiefly by ridiculing parents who, for example, don’t want their five-year-olds seeing books about children or anthropomorphized animals being raised by parents in homoerotic relationships. Scorn will be heaped on parents who hold the unpopular belief that homoeroticism and cross-dressing—even when presented in whitewashed, water-colored images—don’t belong in the picture books section of public libraries.

Most taxpayers have no idea how purchasing decisions in publicly subsidized libraries are made, but they should, because the policy librarians follow serves as a de facto book-banning mechanism.

Libraries use Collection Development Policies (CDP’s) to determine which books they will purchase with their limited budgets. CDP’s maintain that librarians should purchase only books that have been positively reviewed by two “professionally recognized” review journals. Guess what folks, the “professionally recognized” review journals are dominated by ideological “progressives.” Publishing companies too are dominated by ideological “progressives,” so getting books published that espouse conservative ideas (particularly on the topics of homosexuality and gender dysphoria) is nigh unto impossible.

If librarians really cared about the full and free exchange of ideas and if they really believed that “book-banning” is dangerous to society, they would direct their rage and ridicule at the powerful publishing companies, professionally-recognized review journals, and their own profession, all of which do far more “book-banning” than does a handful of powerless parents seeking to have a picture book removed (or sometimes just moved).

The American Library Association has a goddess they revere. Their goddess, now deceased, is Judith Krug, past president of the portentously named Office of Intellectual Freedom (or is it the “Ministry of Truth”?) of the American Library Association. In a 1995 interview, she said this:

We have to serve the information needs of all the community and for so long “the community” that we served was the visible community…. And so, if we didn’t see those people, then we didn’t have to include them in our service arena. The truth is, we do have to.…

We never served the gay community. Now, we didn’t serve the gay community, because there weren’t materials to serve them. You can’t buy materials if they’re not there. But part of our responsibility is to identify what we need and then to begin to ask for it. Another thing we have to be real careful about is that even though the materials that come out initially aren’t wonderful, it’s still incumbent upon us to have that voice represented in the collection. This was exactly what happened in the early days of the women’s movement, and as the black community became more visible and began to demand more materials that fulfilled their particular information needs. We can’t sit back and say, “Well, they’re not the high-quality materials I’m used to buying.” They’re probably not, but if they are the only thing available, then I believe we have to get them into the library. (emphasis added)

I wonder if librarians heed Krug’s words when it comes to resources that espouse conservative views on homosexuality and gender dysphoria. Are the anti-book-banning soldiers fighting to fill the gaping lacuna in their picture books and Young Adult (YA) literature collections on these topics? Are they fulfilling their responsibility to fill that hole if necessary with materials that are less than “wonderful”—which is to say, with materials that their “professionally recognized review journals” may not review positively or at all?

Here are some children’s book ideas that librarians could request to fill gaps in their collections. These are not book ideas I want to see in libraries. Rather, they’re topics ALA members would request if they were truly committed to the principles they espouse:

• Books for children and teens that challenge “progressive” beliefs about homosexuality and gender dysphoria—you know, pro-heterosexuality/pro-heteronormativity/pro-cisgender books

• YA novels about teens who feel sadness and resentment about being intentionally deprived of a mother or father and who seek to find their missing biological parents

• Dark, angsty novels about teens who are damaged by the promiscuity of their “gay” “fathers” who hold sexual monogamy in disdain

• Novels about young adults who are consumed by a sense of loss and bitterness that their parents allowed them during the entirety of their childhood to cross-dress, change their names, and take chemicals to prevent puberty followed by cross-sex hormones, thus irreversibly altering their psycho-social development and deforming their bodies

• Novels about young girls who suffer grievously because their fathers adopted female personas

• Novels about teens who suffer because of the harrowing fights and serial relationships of their lesbian mothers

• A picture book that shows the joy a baby bird experiences when, after the tragic West Nile virus deaths of her two beloved daddies, she’s finally adopted by a daddy and mommy? (For those “progressives” who struggle with analogies and reading comprehension, please note, the joy the baby bird experiences is not about her daddies’ deaths but about her adoption by a father and a mother.)

I listed several of these story ideas four years ago in an article that so enraged “progressives” that some  homosexuality-affirming websites, including Huffington Post, took me to the woodshed. In doing so, they (not surprisingly) misrepresented my thesis. I was wondering whether librarians would request and include stories in their book collections with which some children may identify but that convey ideas “progressives” don’t like. I was suggesting that “progressives” engage in a more absolute form of “book-banning” than the kind of which they accuse conservatives.

The anger of “progressives” on these websites demonstrated that they are far more, shall we say, “passionate” in their opposition to books they don’t like—including even book ideas—than are conservatives. “Progressives” become enraged in the presence of a story idea—including book ideas that haven’t even a hint of hatred.

Their anger confirmed my point. When conservative parents challenge an occasional book, “progressives” ridicule them (which includes librarians ridiculing their own patrons). When I merely describe hypothetical storylines, “progressives” go ballistic. How dare I even propose a story that suggests some child somewhere may want a mother and a father or that a teen may not like the promiscuity of her fathers or the emotional and relational instability of his mothers. If this is how homosexuals respond to a story idea, imagine if such a story were published and purchased and displayed in a library? If that were to happen, librarians better be ready for the jackbooted, anti-censorship change-agents who will storm-troop in demanding that some book-banning take place pronto. They might even sue.

While conservatives are forced to subsidize multiple homosexuality-affirming picture books and drag queen story hours, “progressives” aren’t forced to subsidize any resources that dissent from partisan, “progressive” dogma on sexuality.

And the ALA claims to be all about intellectual freedom.  Yeah, right. And the emperor’s new clothes are fabulous.

The ALA is plunging deep into the “drag” cesspool, pulling children down with them.

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck
and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.
(Luke 17:2)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/The-ALA-Plunges-Deeper-into-the-Drag-Cesspool-1.mp3

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In response to last week’s article on Banned Books Week, multiple homosexuality-affirming websites have been apoplectic about the five story ideas about homosexuality and gender confusion I mentioned, particularly the hypothetical picture book about a bird who experiences joy when, after the deaths of her fathers, she is adopted by a father and mother.

These websites make two errors: They twist what I actually said (no surprise there) and ignore the fact that I wasn’t recommending any of the hypothetical books. Rather, I was wondering aloud whether librarians would apply consistently their own anti-book-banning propositions. I was wondering if they would request those kinds of stories in order to fill gaps in their book collections. I was wondering if librarians would include stories in their book collections with which some children may identify but that convey ideas “progressives” don’t like. I was suggesting that “progressives” engage in a more absolute form of “book-banning” than the kind of which they accuse conservatives.

The anger of “progressives” on these websites demonstrates that they are far more, shall we say, “passionate” in their opposition to books they don’t like—including even book ideas—than are conservatives. “Progressives” become enraged in the presence of a story idea—including book ideas that haven’t even a suggestion of hatred. Their anger confirms my point. When conservative parents challenge an actual book, “progressives” ridicule them (which includes librarians ridiculing their own patrons). When I merely describe hypothetical stories, the Left goes ballistic.

Homosexuals have once again revealed their hypocrisy. In response to the story ideas I described, they are howling in rage: How dare I even propose a story that suggests some child somewhere may want a mother and a father or that a teen may not like the promiscuity of her fathers or the emotional and relational instability of his mothers. If this is how homosexuals respond to a story idea, imagine if such a story were published and purchased and displayed in a library? Librarians better be ready for the jackbooted agents of change—you know, the anti-censorship crowd.

Ah, how the liberal ironies abound.

I also received a few colorful email messages from critics that reveal a lot about the Left’s inability to read closely; the nature of their commitment to diversity, tolerance, and truth; and their lack of understanding of Scripture.

** Caution: Vulgar Content **

Email from Jason Boro:

(Mr. Boro quotes from my article), “Will they ask for picture books that show the joy a little birdie experiences when after the West Nile virus deaths of her two daddies, she’s finally adopted by a daddy and mommy?”

How anyone can wish the death of parents is a vile c***. I can only imagine that when this despicable, poor excuse of a human being dies there will be thousands dancing on her grave to celebrate that she can no longer can spew forth her hate. How sad it must be to be filled with so much hate and venom. 

You as an organization are so far from Christianity it is frightening. 

Email from Grant Lange:

(Mr. Lange begins with same quote), “You have gone WAY too far and crossed some serious lines.  Do not EVER call yourself a “christian” or a “pro-family” person…as I can finally see you that display the characteristics of neither.  Advocating the death of any person you deem unworthy or putting any child through that scenario you describe is abhorrent and certainly NOT “pro-family”.

I will in fact thank you, however, for opening my eyes.  This shock has allowed to me to see you and this organization for what it is….nothing but hateful prejudice disguised as “faith”. 

Email from John Lockwood:

I just wanted to take a moment to express my disgust and disappointment with the current article by Laurie Higgins. 

What kind of sane person spews the divisiveness and hatred, like she does and did?  Certainly not a religious, god-fearing person.  Anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge of the bible and the teachings of Jesus, would see just how far off the mark she is.  She claims to be a happily married mother and wife, and yet her pre-occupation with the sexual behaviors of others, is disgusting, and frankly, a bit concerning.  Why does she feel it is her duty to deny others, get into their lives, and dictate what people read and how parents raise their children?  At the very least, taking the scriptures to heart, she should be loving, caring, and if you really believe, subservient.  Instead, she prattles on, dispensing hateful advice on what our children should and should not read.  Dictating how our schools and libraries should be stocked.  She has no excuse for her behavior, and your employing of her, and publishing her filth, is tacit acceptance of her behavior. 

Enough!  Walk the walk, or shut up.  You either believe and love your god, or you act like this woman.  Hypocrisy is evident, and that takes away from the legitimacy of your organization. 

Email from anonymous critic:

F*** you. You are evil. How dare you wish teens identify with loss instead of love.

My thoughts:

The claims that I wish “the death of parents” and advocate the deaths of people I “deem unworthy” are both peculiar and false. I described a story in which a bird lost her homosexual parents and was subsequently adopted by a father and a mother. There was nothing in my description that expressed a wish for or advocated the deaths of parents. The bird’s joy results from her adoption—not the deaths of her parents. If I were to suggest a picture book about a child who experiences joy at being adopted by a young mother and father after the deaths of her grandparents who had been raising her, would I be accused by anyone of wishing for or advocating the deaths of grandparents? I suspect not, which points to the kind of ideological oppression the Left seeks.

And I don’t deem homosexuals unworthy. Quite the opposite. I consider their lives—both temporal and eternal—of infinite value. My moral opposition to homoerotic activity does not diminish my recognition of their infinite value, because I don’t believe their identity or worth is defined by their sin.

The hypothetical story I described suggests, rather, that children deeply and inherently long for both mothers and fathers. Are Boro and Lange asserting that there exists no child adopted by two men or two women who longs for the mother or father of which they have been intentionally deprived?

And if telling a story that includes a painful experience for a child constitutes “advocating” such a painful experience—as Mr. Lange argues—then our libraries and publishing companies have been “advocating” death, divorce, disease, drug use, rape, bullying, beatings, molestation, and torture for children for quite some time.

While the Left claims to want stories with which children and teens identify, my anonymous critic believes that it’s the task of authors to direct children to feel a certain way. He doesn’t want any books published that reflect children’s feelings about same-sex parenting that the Left doesn’t like. Instead, he wants only books in libraries that direct children on how to feel about the absence of either mothers or fathers.

My critics suggest that I express hatred, but is the claim that children have a right to be raised whenever possible by a mother and father a sign of hatred? Is the claim that some children may feel sadness about the absence of a mother or father an expression of hatred? And is the claim that libraries should include stories about children who—though loving their adoptive homosexual parents—wish they had both a mother and father a sign of hatred?

A word about love: To treat someone with love requires first an understanding of what is true. If homoerotic activity is, indeed, immoral, unhealthy, and destructive to both temporal and eternal lives, it is the very antithesis of love to affirm homoerotic activity and relationships.

When Mr. Lockwood suggests that I demonstrate little knowledge of Scripture and that I should “walk the walk, or shut up,” he ignores the biblical truth that while loving his creation, God hates much that we humans choose to engage in, including homoerotic activity. That is made clear in both the Old and New Testaments.

Is “the walk” to which Lockwood refers, the walk of God who says that homoerotic activity (among other behaviors) is detestable and that none who engage in it will see the kingdom of Heaven? Or is “the walk” the walk of Jesus who says that marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman? Does the walk include God’s mandate that his followers should expose the “the unfruitful deeds of darkness,” declare “the whole counsel of God,” and be willing to be hated because the world first hated Jesus?

Or did Mr. Lockwood mean I should walk the walk of a heretic, denying those parts of Scripture that are difficult, counter-cultural, inconvenient, and will make the world hate me?

For most of my life, I paid little attention to either the private or public activity of homosexual activists, but then their activities became too troubling to ignore:

• They started infiltrating public schools, demanding that their non-objective assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality and theirs alone be taught as objective, unassailable truths.
• They began imposing their redefinition of marriage on all of society through specious, incoherent arguments.
• They began attacking First Amendment rights.
• They began robbing children of their right to be raised whenever possible by a mother and a father.
• They  began hurling epithets at anyone who dared to express ontological and moral beliefs with which homosexual activists disagreed.
• And then they began their quest to make it impossible for dissenters to work in America.

In other words, they began demanding the entire public square to themselves.

Mr. Lockwood is wrong: It is “progressives,” not conservatives, who seek to dictate what people read and how children are raised. It is the Left that imposes their values and assumptions about homosexuality on all families through public schools, while censoring all resources that dissent from their homosexuality-affirming dogma.

It is the Left that believes that kindergartners should be exposed to Leftist assumptions about homoeroticism and gender confusion in public school.

It is the Left that engages in defacto censorship in library book collections.

Perhaps the resentment generated by my book ideas is evidence of the claim Robert Oscar Lopez—who was raised by two lesbians—makes in his article “Same-Sex Parenting: Child Abuse?“:

“Normalization” [of same-sex parenting] demands a kind of silence from multiple parties in a child’s life. The child’s lost biological parent(s) must keep a distance or disappear to allow two gay adults to play the role of parent. Extended family must avoid asking intrusive questions and shouldn’t show any disapproval through facial expressions or gestures. Schools and community associations have to downplay their celebrations of fatherhood or motherhood (even canceling Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in favor of “Parenting Day”). The media have to engage in a massive propaganda campaign, complete with Disney productions featuring lesbian moms, to stifle any objections or worries. Nobody must challenge the gay parents’ claim that all is being done for love. Does the silence of so many surrounding parties reverse the sense of loss?

No. The child still feels the loss, but learns to remain silent about it because her loss has become a taboo, a site of repression, rather than a site for healing and reconstruction.

I’ve learned that truth and accuracy is less valued by “progressive” ideologues than are lies and distortion in the service of their unholy cultural quest for ideological conformity to false and destructive ideas.

Illinois Family Institute
Faith, Family and Freedom Banquet

Friday, September 19 , 2014
The Meadows Club – Rolling Meadows, IL

Secure your tickets now – click here or call (708) 781-9328.

Words to describe librarians who eagerly promote the American Library Association’s “Banned Books Week,” of which we are in the midst, include sanctimonious, condescending, dishonest, hypocritical, and alarmist. Many, perhaps most, of the books that parents express concerns over are picture books. And their interest is not in banning these books. Their interest is in making them inaccessible to little ones.

Moreover, in recent years, most of the controversies over picture books have involved the relentless efforts of homosexual activists and their allies to change the moral beliefs of other people’s children. Embedding sexually subversive ideas in soft focus or cartoony picture book illustrations does not render them less subversive. It renders them more insidious.

In a recent Chicago Tribune article, author, high school librarian, and homosexual activist James Klise oozes sanctimony and condescension when he writes, “I support any person’s right to read anything he or she chooses….I confess, my colleagues and I have approached Banned Books Week with a lighthearted attitude — we use markers to draw dramatic flames on the signs….” He also describes his “award-winning” novel about a homosexual teen as “a gentle book.”

No adult—at least no mature adult—believes that five-year-olds have a “right to read anything” they choose. And any adult who actually does believe such a feckless notion should not be a librarian, teacher, or parent.

“Progressives” are condescending in their characterization of those whose ideas about what constitutes age-appropriate material differs from theirs. Despite what “progressive” librarians think, the view that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality is not a fact. It is an assumption and one which many believe is as radical, subversive, and wrong as is the belief that adult consensual incest is morally equivalent to sex between unrelated people.

In the service of their sanctimonious indignation about book banning, would children’s librarians make available a picture book that “gently” depicts the loving relationship between two brothers who live together in a romantic relationship and are raising a child conceived through an egg donation and surrogacy?

Would Klise and his ilk make easily available a picture book that “gently” depicts a polyamorous family consisting of three men and two women who are raising children together in a loving “pod”?

What possible reason could our presumptuous, ideology-imposing librarians have for not making easily available such picture books?  

“Progressives” are dishonest because they claim that parents are trying to ban books when in reality parents are usually objecting to the easy accessibility to young children of books whose content is age-inappropriate—something that virtually all libraries do.

“Progressives” are presumptuous because they seek to impose their philosophical, moral, and political views on all of society via  the public library system.

“Progressives” are alarmist for suggesting that any accommodation of beliefs that differ from theirs about what constitutes age- appropriate material will lead ineluctably to the world depicted in Fahrenheit 451. Interestingly, they never consider what their beliefs about what constitutes age-appropriate material may lead to.

In a 1995 interview with Beverly Goldberg, the highly respected Judith F. Krug, decades-long president of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, had this to say about the importance of intellectual diversity in library book collections:

We have to serve the information needs of all the community and for so long “the community” that we served was the visible community…. And so, if we didn’t see those people, then we didn’t have to include them in our service arena. The truth is, we do have to.…

We never served the gay community. Now, we didn’t serve the gay community, because there weren’t materials to serve them. You can’t buy materials if they’re not there. But part of our responsibility is to identify what we need and then to begin to ask for it. Another thing we have to be real careful about is that even though the materials that come out initially aren’t wonderful, it’s still incumbent upon us to have that voice represented in the collection. This was exactly what happened in the early days of the women’s movement, and as the black community became more visible and began to demand more materials that fulfilled their particular information needs. We can’t sit back and say, “Well, they’re not the high-quality materials I’m used to buying.” They’re probably not, but if they are the only thing available, then I believe we have to get them into the library. [emphasis added]

According to Krug, intellectual diversity is of such paramount importance that it trumps even quality of material. And if resources are scarce, Krug believes it is the obligation of librarians to ask for them.

Klise expresses how “literally foreign” the notion of “censorship” is to him and his ideological colleagues. Really? “Progressives” like Klise are hypocritical because while they condemn as “book banners” those who seek to have books that promote sexually subversive ideas out of reach of little ones, they refuse to request  books that explore dissenting  views of homosexuality (or gender confusion).

Since James Klise is a high school librarian (and adviser to his high school’s “gay”-straight alliance” ), perhaps he could find out how many novels, plays, non-fiction books, and films his school’s library has that express conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality as compared to the number of resources it has that express “progressive views”?

Do he and his colleagues agree with Judith Krug’s assertion that it is incumbent upon them to request resources that explore different points of view and speak to the invisible community? How about requesting novels for teens that show the suffering that results from the sexual promiscuity prevalent among the male homosexual community? How about requesting novels that depict the pain children feel because their “gay” dads don’t believe that sexual exclusivity is part of “marital” fidelity or monogamy? How about requesting novels that show the pain that results from the high levels of domestic abuse and instability within many lesbian relationships? How about requesting novels that show the pain some children may feel over being deliberately deprived of either a mother or father?

There are several issues involved in this topic, including ideological diversity and age-appropriate accessibility. And when public school libraries are involved, perhaps we should consider the goals of edifying and educating students in ways that will promote both private and civic virtue.

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On Tuesday, John Keilman wrote a lighthearted editorial on last week’s annual dishonest campaign by the American Library Association (ALA) laughably named “Banned Books Week.”

His personal story was revelatory. Keilman shared that when he was young, pulp novels with “absolutely no redeeming value” beckoned with an irresistible force. He describes what so powerfully attracted him: their “lurid” titles and the cover art which depicted the hero with “his arm around a busty woman, blasting a hole through some underworld stooge.”

But then after explicitly stating the sexual and violent language and imagery that served as “catnip to a preteen” boy, he almost-deftly switches his argument.

After describing the features that actually appealed to him, he then spends the rest of the article suggesting that what motivated him to sneakily read these novels was parental disapproval. From that strained but common argument he posits, perhaps disingenuously, that since kids are attracted to books that parents prohibit, if we just prohibit good books, kids will be attracted to them. Yes, Keilman believes that all parents need do is furrow their censorious brows at Moby Dick and before they know it, little Betty will be hidden under her covers with a flashlight reading about Ahab’s battle with the great fish.

Here are some of the issues surrounding “Banned Books Week” that Keilman ignored:

• Most parents are not requesting that a book be banned. Most parents are requesting one of three things: 1. that a book be moved to an adult section of the library, 2. that a library not use its limited resources to purchase a particular book, or 3. that a publicly funded school not select a particular book to be taught.Parents are not requesting that publishing companies be prohibited from publishing particular book titles, that parents be prohibited from purchasing them, or that Amazon stop selling them.
• Books that are never purchased can’t be “banned.” So, for example, when school and community libraries refuse to purchase or request books that espouse conservative assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality, there’s no opportunity for “progressives” to “ban” books. Their censorship is achieved prior to the purchase of books; it’s far more comprehensive; and it’s much more cunning in that librarians have created the de facto censorship protocol, euphemistically named “Collection Development Policies” (CDPs), that effectively bans books they don’t like (i.e., conservative books) with nary a controversial word messily spilling out into the public square. If CDPs resulted in no books being purchased that espouse liberal assumptions about homosexuality, you can bet your bottom dollar that ALA members and diversity devotees everywhere would throw a wobbly even Rumpelstiltskin would admire.

Here’s an interesting exercise for Mr. Keilman and anyone who cares about both intellectual diversity and how their taxes are spent: Search your local high school’s or community’s library catalogue from the comfort of your home using the search terms “sexual orientation,” “lesbian,” “gay,” and “homosexuality.” Count up how many resources espouse liberal assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality (scores and scores) versus how many affirm conservative assumptions (close to nil).

Then try to get your library to fill the gaping hole in its book collection by ordering some of these:

• A Queer Thing Happened to America by Michael L. Brown
• Divorcing Marriage edited by Daniel Cere and Douglas Farrow
• The Gay Gospel by Joe Dallas
• The Bible and Homosexual Practice by Robert A.J. Gagnon
• The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals ed. by Robert P. George and Jean Bethke Elshtain
• Light in the Closet by Arthur Goldberg
• Ex-Gays?: A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation by Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse
• The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian
• Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
• Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage by Peter Sprigg
• Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting by Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier
• The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today by Alan Sears and Craig Osten
• Same-Sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk by Matthew D. Staver
• Out from Under by Dawn Stefanowicz
• Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone by Frank Turek
• Homosexuality and American Public Life edited by Christopher Wolfe
• Same-Sex Matters: The Challenge of Homosexuality edited by Christopher Wolfe
• Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan

If your library refuses to order any of these books citing Collection Development Policies as their reason, remind them of these words from the former head of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, Judith Krug:

We have to serve the information needs of all the community and for so long “the community” that we served was the visible community…. And so, if we didn’t see those people, then we didn’t have to include them in our service arena. The truth is, we do have to.

…

We never served the gay community. Now, we didn’t serve the gay community because there weren’t materials to serve them. You can’t buy materials if they’re not there. But part of our responsibility is to identify what we need and then to begin to ask for it. Another thing we have to be real careful about is that even though the materials that come out initially aren’t wonderful, it’s still incumbent upon us to have that voice represented in the collection. This was exactly what happened in the early days of the women’s movement, and as the black community became more visible and began to demand more materials that fulfilled their particular information needs. We can’t sit back and say, “Well, they’re not the high-quality materials I’m used to buying.” They’re probably not, but if they are the only thing available, then I believe we have to get them into the library. [emphasis added]

According to Krug, intellectual diversity is of such paramount importance that it trumps even quality of material. And if resources are scarce, Krug believes it is the obligation of librarians to ask for them.

In remembering the books that so tantalized him as a boy, Keilman offered one other illuminating reflection: “If they never make the most-challenged list, it’s probably because no respectable school library would stock them in the first place.”

To read more on IFI’s response to “Banned Books Week” (and the Tribune), click HERE.

On Oct. 3, 2008, the Washington Post covered the story of some high school students in Virginia who attempted to expose the “book banning” activities engaged in by their high school librarians who censor virtually all resources that express conservative perspectives on homosexuality. The librarians offered the usual embarrassing defenses for their censorship of ideas, trying futilely to mask their utter hypocrisy regarding censorship.

Perhaps the weakest and most embarrassing justification proffered was that conservative books would make “gay students ‘feel inferior’ ” which is another way of saying that ideas are controversial. I hate to break it to library ideologues, but subjective “feelings” do not take precedence over ideas in the academic world. And before library ideologues sputter some specious comparison between conservative ideas on homosexual conduct and racism, let’s be clear that homosexuality is not equivalent to race, and expressions of disapproval of homosexual practice are not equivalent to racism.

I imagine that students who use drugs, alcohol, or tobacco “feel inferior” when they are exposed to resources critical of drug, alcohol, or tobacco use. And I imagine that promiscuous and aggressive students “feel inferior” when exposed to resources critical of promiscuity and aggression. And I imagine that students whose conservative faith traditions are central to their identities, including Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Protestants, “feel inferior” when they see 50-150 resources on their library shelves that implicitly and explicitly criticize their deeply held religious beliefs on homosexuality. Librarians apparently have little concern about the feelings of those students.

Fortunately, there are a few librarians left in this country who have the integrity to reject demands to conform to the propagandist impulses of the ALA.

Here’s just such a one. She’s a blogger who goes by the name “Annoyed Librarian,” and the Library Journal has just started carrying her blog. In this recent post, she takes the ALA to the woodshed in a biting and sarcastic piece that exposes all or most of the chuckleheaded justifications that the ALA uses to defend their censorship of conservative ideas.

For clarification, here are some explanatory notes on terms used in the article below:

AL= Annoyed Librarian
ALA = American Library Association
LJ = Library Journal

Enjoy this piece, and then please send it to your community and public school library staffs.

 Some “Censorship” is Good

http://blog.libraryjournal.com/annoyedlibrarian/2008/10/08/some-censorship-is-good/

Now down to business. Somehow I missed this story in the Washington Post a few days ago, but that’s what I have readers for, to send me stuff like this. “Banned Books, Chapter 2” is quite a fun read.

“During a week that librarians nationwide are highlighting banned books, conservative Christian students and parents showcased their own collection outside a Fairfax County high school yesterday — a collection they say was banned by the librarians themselves…. Titles include Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting and Someone I Love Is Gay, which argues that homosexuality is not ‘a hopeless condition.'” We sure wouldn’t want those kinds of books in a high school library! We want people to think homosexuality is a hopeless condition!

But banned by the librarians themselves? They obviously don’t understand what a “banned” book is. Just for the “conservative Christian students and parents,” I’ll explain this whole process. First, the library has to buy the book. Then, some “conservative Christian” student or parent has to complain about the book. Thus, the book is “challenged.” Though the books are never removed from the library, after 24 hours the “challenge” is automatically upgraded to “banned,” because it sounds more provocative. That explains those announcements you’re always hearing over the library loudspeakers: “In accordance with ALA regulations, the status of Frisky Gay Squirrels has now been upgraded to ‘banned.’ Any copies of Frisky Gay Squirrels left unattended will be randomly checked out to anyone who happens to be in the library.” Librarians love this, because then they get to fight “censorship.”

But what if the library never acquires the book in the first place? Then ipso facto it can’t be “banned.” That’s the first thing you need to get through your conservative Christian heads. The question, then, is why wasn’t the book acquired, or added to the collection if it was a gift? The conservative Christians think it was for political reasons, to deliberately make sure their side in a debate wasn’t being represented in the library collection. Those conservative Christians can be sooo cynical sometimes. It had nothing to do with politics. If the selection decision had anything to do with politics, why then the ALA would say these librarians were “censors.” The ALA hasn’t called these librarians censors. Thus the books weren’t rejected for political reasons. QED. Besides, we can’t have the ALA coming out and accusing librarians for censorship just for keeping those mean old conservative books off the shelves. That’s not censorship. That’s just good sense!

Since it’s obvious that politics had nothing to do with the decision not to add the books to the collection, what could have been the reason?

“Most of the books were turned down after school librarians said they did not meet school system standards.” Ooh, that’s a good one! It has such an official tone to it. “School system standards” sounds so impressive. I bet that school system has high standards indeed!

But that’s not all. “Fairfax County’s policy on library book selection says ‘the collection should support the diverse interests, needs and viewpoints of the school community.'” Hmm? That sure sounds like they should add at least some of the books. I’d be willing to bet there’s at lease one homophobe in that high school, and don’t we want homophobes to read books, too? I guess not, because apparently there are factors more important than supporting “diverse” interests, like not supporting the interests you don’t like.

“Library officials said donated and purchased books alike are evaluated by the same standards, including two positive reviews from professionally recognized journals.” This is another great one. I seriously doubt that every book purchased or donated really does need “two positive reviews from professionally recognized journals” to be added to the collection. But just for argument’s sake let’s take this statement as truth. Notice the wording of it. It needs two reviews in professionally recognized journals. The sweet logic of this is very impressive. “Hey,” say the conservative Christians, “we found fifteen journals that reviewed Marriage on Trial!” “I’m sorry,” say the librarians, “we don’t professionally recognize those journals.” It could be the case — and I’m only making the suggestion — that these librarians only “professionally recognize” the sorts of journals that review the sorts of books they already agree with. It’s possible, right? Hardly likely, knowing how earnest librarians really are about representing “diverse” viewpoints, including the viewpoints of those mean old conservative Christians, but still possible.

“None of the donated titles met that standard, said Susan Thornily, coordinator of library information services for Fairfax schools.” I know this comes as a huge surprise to all of you. “Some librarians also said that the nonfiction books were heavy on scripture but light on research, or that the books would make gay students ‘feel inferior,’ she said.” That was the line that stunned me. Those school librarians were moving along so well, putting up cleverly circular arguments that sounded almost librarian-like. And maybe I can see rejecting a book as “light on research,” because I’m sure every anti-conservative nonfiction book in that library is heavily researched and that none of them just state the politically correct opinions of the authors without much argument. That high school must have a rigorous research collection, indeed. But how are we supposed to take seriously the caveat that the books would make gay students “feel inferior”? How is that not a politicized reason not to accept the book? First of all, is it likely these gay students will read the books? Is it just having them on the shelves? Does that make them “feel inferior”? Or is it just knowing that some people out there disapprove of homosexuality? How could any gay students not already know this?

And how is that any different than African American students feeling inferior by having Huckleberry Finn on the shelves? Or conservative Christians feeling “inferior” because every book on homosexuality in their library says exactly the same thing, that every opinion they have is wrong and they are bad people for being so intolerant? Whatever happened to that old librarian standby that just because a book offends a portion of the population doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in the collection? They sure like to trot that warhorse out when “conservative Christians” complain about Heather Has Two Very Excited Daddies.

“Thornily said school librarians have rejected other books that ‘target minority groups’ and would offend African Americans or other nonwhite students.” Is a book arguing homosexuality is wrong “targeting a minority group”? Targeting? Are these books advocating violence against homosexuals? That seems unlikely. Why isn’t the Office of Intellectual “Freedom” barking loudly in the direction of Fairfax County and explaining to these librarians that just because some group is “offended” by a book, this is no reason not to have it. In fact, this is a reason to have it, in order to show how much we value “intellectual freedom” and “diversity.” Conservative Christians are a minority group, and no one cares about offending them. “In this case, librarians were concerned about the level of scholarship in the books, many of which come from small church publishers.” Uh huh. I’m sure that’s all it was.

If the politics were reversed, no matter the level of “scholarship,” you know the ALA would be swooping down on these poor librarians screaming “Censor!” at them. This example just goes to show the tortured logic some librarians can apply when they don’t like the viewpoint of the book. What the conservative Christians need to understand is that librarians can always find a legitimate sounding reason not to add a book to the collection. Personally, that doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t see why a librarian can’t just say, “this looks like a really stupid book and I find it offensive. Out to the recycling bin with it!” What’s the big deal really? So what if homophobes don’t have any books affirming their views? The library isn’t there to support diverse views. It’s there to put forward the views librarians approve of. That’s why people become librarians in the first place, because they love that power. After all, these books are still available and Focus on the Family would probably be happy to send you a copy. Only the ALA and their minions call it “censorship.”

In fact, what’s refreshing here is that there was a slip in the bureaucratic explanation. They had that beautiful, circular “professionally recognized journal” argument. Then they had to come out and say they reject books they think might offend some people, especially the librarians. We knew it all along. I’m just glad someone finally admitted it. Come to think of it, since they haven’t turned on these librarians, maybe the ALA OIF has finally admitted it as well. A brave new world indeed.

For the past 26 years, the increasingly radical American Library Association (ALA) has celebrated a week dedicated to the myth of book banning and censorship in public libraries. In truth, the books that are supposedly ‘banned’ are readily available for purchase at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.

Ironically, the ALA fails to recognize that public and school libraries across the nation do, in fact, engage in censorship of conservative worldviews and scholarship. For example, why is it that Deerfield High School has over 60 pro-homosexual books on their shelves, but not one book articulating a traditional view of this contentious topic?

TAKE ACTION: Search the database of your local public high school library for evidence of book-banning on the topic of homosexuality.

Following that search, contact us HERE, so that we can compile a list of schools that appear to engage in systematic book-banning. Please provide the following information:

• Name of the high school
• Approximate number of books on the topic (including both fiction and non-fiction)
• Approximate number of books that appear to include both conservative and liberal viewpoints
• Approximate number of books that appear to embody, espouse, or be written from only a liberal perspective
• Approximate number of books that appear to embody, espouse, or be written from only a conservative perspective.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please send IFI’s Division of School Advocacy an email HERE.

Background
Every time a parent musters the courage to question the inclusion of a book in a middle or high school curricula, our perfervid protectors of academic freedom and defenders of diversity start squawking about censorship and book banning. They raise the specter of Fahrenheit 451 in their efforts to scare one segment of the population and humiliate another. What their squawking conceals, however, is a pervasive and near absolute censorship of conservative ideas and scholarship on the subject of homosexuality.

Most parental challenges arise from concern about obscene language, graphic sex, and the promotion of biased, unproven theories on homosexuality. It’s troubling enough that librarians and other academic activists apparently believe that book selection criteria should never include the nature and extent of obscene language or the nature and extent of sexual scenes. After all, rejecting a text because it includes egregiously obscene language or sexual scenes of such graphic nature that in a movie they would necessitate an “R” rating does not constitute the exclusion of ideas. In other words, if a department chooses not to include a novel or play because of language or sex, they are not censoring an exploration of ideas.

What should be troubling to all citizens concerned with freedom is that while academic activists are unwilling to reject a text because of language and sex, they are deeply committed to censoring important ideas. They are unequivocally committed to banning books and all other resources that espouse conservative or traditional views on homosexuality or “transgenderism.” They will not purchase nor will they teach any resources that challenge the current dogmatic orthodoxy on the nature and morality of homosexuality. They censor with carefree abandon all scholarship that presents a dissenting view. All of their commitments to intellectual diversity, academic freedom, and tolerance are as conspicuously absent as the books, articles, essays, and films they ban.

Just this past August, I resigned from my full-time position as a writing tutor in my local public high school’s writing center. This is also the school from which all four of my children graduated. I learned over the years that while our freshman cannot make it through their freshman year without being exposed to resources that seek to normalize homosexuality, our students make it through all four years without ever being exposed to a single resource that articulates conservative or traditional views on homosexuality. No teacher ever brought in a single resource-not an excerpt from a book, not an essay, not an editorial, not a speaker-nothing that presents an opposing viewpoint.

Meanwhile, teachers have brought in articles from popular magazines, taught plays (Heidi Chronicles, The Laramie Project, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes), taught essays, provided panel discussions with gay and transgender students, played games, led activities, mounted theatre productions, arranged field trips (e.g., Anti-Defamation League’s “World of Difference”), and shown films all of which promote one biased view of homosexuality and “transgenderism.” How, pray tell, can students learn to think critically when all they see, hear, and read represents one perspective? This clear, inarguable bias transmogrifies public education into indoctrination. And this indoctrination depends on censorship for its success.

Check for yourself!
Parents, search your local school libraries from your home computer using the following search terms: homosexuality, sexual orientation, gay, lesbian, transgender, gender identity, gender expression, GLBT, and LGBTQ. See what turns up. The last time I checked my public school library, there were approximately seventy-four books, including both fiction and non-fiction, on the topic of sexual orientation. Of those, there were about ten that are used for debate and therefore include both liberal and conservative viewpoints. Of the remaining sixty-plus books, every single one embodies or espouses a liberal viewpoint. There was not one book written by a scholar, essayist, or popular writer that articulates a conservative position. This, in my humble opinion, exposes a deeply troubling commitment to censorship.

If or when you address the troubling imbalance in your curricula and library book collections, you will likely hear the embarrassing and feeble rationalization that I heard from my administration and library staff. They stated that the library uses certain selection “protocols,” explaining that they order books that have been reviewed favorably by certain review journals. I countered that if their review journals are not reviewing any books from conservative scholars or are not reviewing favorably any books by conservative scholars, then they need to move outside their protocols, because relative balance in the book collection is more important than protocols. It would seem that having one book out of sixty-five might be a good start.

Next week is the America Library Association’s “Banned Books Week.” Their website carries this statement:

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met. [Emphasis added.]

Please use this opportunity to make your case that books from a conservative perspective on homosexuality are being banned with troubling regularity from both public school curricula and libraries.

Spread the Word!
Do you have friends or acquaintances who could benefit from IFI’s informational emails? If you do, please forward this IFI email to them and encourage them to join our e-mail list!

It is only because of concerned citizens like you that we are able to continue promoting pro-family values in the Prairie State.

Thank you for helping us to reach more families!