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Taxpayer-Funded Libraries Defend Obscenity, Child Corruption and Censorship

**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 Evisonanother 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 bookgraphic novelGender 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:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Taxpayer-Funded-Libraries-Defend-Obscenity-Child-Corruption-and-Censorship.mp3






The ALA Plunges Deeper into the Drag Cesspool

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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