If you want to know what “progressive” teachers think of conservative parents, please take a gander at the following blog post from recently retired Deerfield High School English teacher (and former colleague) David Hirsch. On October 6, 2022, Hirsch published a post titled, “Watch Out Parents: Big Conservative Is Not Just Coming After Teachers and Librarians” in which he makes a number of mindboggling claims. Warning—Irony Alert:

We need to talk about how you are interacting with your children at home. What are you teaching them? How are you modeling well? Are you making the right choices – the best choices? Would your legislators and political leaders approve of how you are raising your children? Do you talk about CRT? Are you too accepting of gender non-conforming behavior or ideas? Would you allow your child to use they/them pronouns? If so, Big Conservative might knock on your door for this kind of thought crime.

We hear about parents’ choice. That is the rationale for a slew of censorship across more than a dozen states. However, which parents? What choices? For the most part, these book-banning (and sometimes burning) movements are aligned with a far wrong wing political agenda. They do not reflect ALL parents’ choices, just a specific conservative religious and usually white one.

So this isn’t just about parents having a say in what their kids read in school. This is about ideologues having control over your children’s educations. Teachers and librarians were the first to experience this intense scrutiny and vitriol, but this movement will not end with them.

You may think, what I teach my children in my own home is not anyone’s business but my own – and you would be right as long as what you were doing was aligned with Big Conservative. But if it is not, your behavior might be labeled child abuse and you as a negligent parent.

Several states banned children who identify as a gender other than the one assigned at birth from receiving any interventions. They criminalized the act of assisting these children from even exploring anything beyond their gender at birth – even if their parents did it!

So if you are looking at teachers and librarians and thinking, just pick less controversial texts, just make your lessons about the subject area and not about social issues, know this: that same message will be tailored for parents who don’t agree with the censors and extremists.

Let’s go one step further: How will these wrong wing censors know you are veering away from their prescribed curriculum? Your children will tell them. The idea that children would “turn in” their parents was common in totalitarian and fascist regimes. Whether it was the Hitler Youth, the Soviet Union’s Young Pioneers, or Communist Youth reading Mao’s Little Red Book, this technique has deep roots in authoritarian governments’ control of parenting.

… this is just the first battle in a larger war for who decides what your child learns – in and out of school.

As with abortion, immigration, and elections, choice just means sticking with Big Conservative’s point of view; freedom means the right to express opinions that echo specific politicians in a specific party. They are not advocating for freedom and choice, they are creating vehicles to coerce and control – and their reach will not end at the schoolhouse – if we don’t stop it, it is going to ram through the door and enter your house!

Time and space don’t permit addressing all of Hirsch’s risible rhetoric and claims, but I’ll try to cover the most ironic.

1.) What constitutes “Big Conservative”? Regressive leftists control public schools, teachers’ unions; academia (including college and university departments of English, library science, political science, education, and theater); the American Library Association; the National Council of Teachers of English; the Modern Language Association; the Illinois State Board of Education; most press outlets; the FBI; the American Psychological Association; the American Medical Association; the American Academy of Pediatrics; the publishing industry; Hollywood; the Nobel Committee for Literature; and social media.

No member of “Big Conservative” has made any demands regarding what pronouns parents use with their own children in their own homes. Meanwhile conservative teachers have lost their jobs for refusing to use incorrect pronouns with students. Leftist teachers and even school districts are openly calling for faculty to conceal from parents if their child is pretending to be the opposite sex at school. Leftist teachers openly admit on TikTok that they seek to indoctrinate other people’s children with leftist views on sex and gender. California will usurp custody of gender-dysphoric children who manage to make it to la-la land from other states.

2.) Hirsch next refers to “wrong wing book-banners” and “burners.” I watch and read a fair amount of news, but somehow, I missed stories about book burners. I have, however, seen firsthand how leftists in public schools ban books. I saw it at Deerfield High School. They do it clandestinely by simply never choosing materials that dissent from whatever leftist ideas they want to advance.

For example, during my last three years (2005-2008) of employment in the writing center at District 113’s Deerfield High School, multiple teachers taught material that espoused leftist views of homosexuality in Freshman Advisory, English classes, and theater classes. Not one of these teachers presented resources that espoused dissenting ideas.

Similarly, the school library had scores of books espousing leftist views on homosexuality and race, while having not one book espousing conservative views.

I viewed this imbalance as evidence of book-banning aligned with a leftwing agenda and pedagogically dangerous, but not Hirsch. Does Hirsch think teachers can help kids learn to think critically without reading material from the best thinkers on both sides of controversial cultural debates?

3.) Victim Hirsch refers to “intense scrutiny and vitriol” experienced by poor, pitiful, put-upon leftist teachers and librarians. To whom and what is he referring? Is he referring to parents justifiably angry about the obscene material teachers select to teach to kids, like when his colleagues Jeff Berger-White and Elliot Hurtig taught the eye-poppingly obscene Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes? Or is he referring to heated school board meetings when presumptuous teachers have gotten their long overdue come-uppance for teaching the obscene comic book Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe?

Maybe Hirsch should publish a post sharing what his DHS colleagues say about conservative parents behind the scenes. Readers concerned about “vitriol” might be interested. And maybe Hirsch could share the truth that leftist teachers don’t want any scrutiny. They want to create the selection criteria that allows them to select books that align with their beliefs and values and deselect (i.e., ban) books that challenge their beliefs and values.

Leftist teachers want absolute autonomy to choose to teach whatever they want and say whatever they want in their classrooms. And don’t believe any leftist teachers who say they want parents to be “advocates” for their own children. Those teachers unequivocally do not want conservative parents advocating for their children if that advocacy cramps leftist style.

4.) Hirsch frets that several states have banned gender-dysphoric children from receiving interventions. What he neglected to mention is that the interventions banned for gender-dysphoric minors are medical interventions with irreversible effects and for which there are no long-term studies proving their safety.

Ever the propagandist, Hirsch describes such bans as “criminalizing” the act of exploring gender. No, lawmakers are criminalizing untested medical interventions that cause irreversible effects. The “trans” cult claims “gender” has nothing to do with physical embodiment (which is why the claim that doctors “assign gender at birth” is so absurd). Leftists claim “gender” is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness, femaleness, both, or neither. Therefore, “exploring gender” does not require altering biochemistry or lopping off body parts.

5.) Hirsch frets too about children sharing with their own parents what is taught in publicly subsidized classrooms. He compares children who tell their parents what government employees/public servants are teaching in the classroom to Hitler Youth and Mao’s Communist Youth.

Can Hirsch really not see how his analogy grotesquely fails? Hitler and Mao used children to turn on their parents by reporting to the government. Teachers like Hirsch are the government. He wants children to align themselves ideologically with the government against their own parents—just as Hitler and Mao did.

To make clear his point, in Hirsch’s screed to leftist teachers, he refers to their students as “your children,” saying “Your children will tell them.”  The students of leftist teachers are not those teachers’ children. Hirsch inadvertently happened on one truth: This technique of separating children ideologically from their parents has deep roots in authoritarian control of parenting. Hirsch just can’t get right who the authoritarians are.

6.) Finally, ironist Hirsch warns that conservative parents—you know, “far–wrong wingers”—are the ones who abuse the rhetoric of freedom and choice in their unholy quest to “coerce and control,” a quest that will not “end at the schoolhouse door.” Hirsch believes the conservative quest to control “will ram through” the front doors of leftists. Hirsch’s solution? Leftist teachers must stop conservative parents now—in public schools.

Conservatives, GET OUT NOW.

postscript: Hirsch returned to DHS for two days in November to talk to students, librarians, and teachers. I wonder if he told kids from conservative families that he views them as “far-wrong wingers.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness. … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.”

With regard to public schools and sexuality, this is the worst of times. It is an age of incomprehensible and destructive foolishness. It is a season of darkness into which America has been plunged by sexual anarchists like Maia Kobabe whose creepy adult comic book graphic memoir continues to divide communities.

For those unfamiliar with Kobabe’s book Gender Queer: A Memoir, click here to see images that librarians in public school and community libraries all across the country believe are appropriate for preteens and teens to see and for taxpayers to be forced to subsidize.

In obscene images, Kobabe, who has a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man, tells the disturbing story of her journey to her disordered “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual person.

In January 2022, two courageous middle school teachers in Community United School District 200 (CUSD 200) in Wheaton, Illinois filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Media” in which they rightly assert that Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer is “pornographic” and “vulgar” and doesn’t belong in the district’s high school libraries.

Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services Charles Kyle selected ten staff members to serve on a committee to evaluate the book challenge. The two middle school teachers shared their reasons for the book challenge with the committee, which was composed of Craig Lawrence, John Disanza, Kristin Diaz, Laine Pehta, Melissa Murphy, Traci Burnham, Matt Biscan, and Erica Valenti, after which the committee met twice and then presented their recommendation to retain the obscene book. Some Wheaton taxpayers should find out the vote of each of these CUSD 200 employees.

In their excellent presentation, middle school teachers Brian Wiewiaro and John Ferguson made clear that their opposition to Gender Queer was not born of book-banning impulses or bigotry:

To be clear, we are not here to remove every book that might possibly be the slightest bit objectionable. We are not here to remove every book with LGBTQ+ themes or characters. This is not the beginning of some crusade to empty our libraries. This is also not a fight against a specific group of people. We have both taught many students throughout our careers, some of whom are LGBTQ+ students. We value all students and welcome them into our classrooms.

They also pointed out that the CUSD 200 Board of Education policy says,

Students are prohibited from … accessing at school any publication that is socially inappropriate or inappropriate due to maturity level of the students, including but not limited to material that is obscene, pornographic, or pervasively lewd and vulgar, contains indecent and vulgar language.

Wiewiora and Ferguson posed several questions to the committee, including these:

• Would you be comfortable posting these images in our high schools? On the district web page? At a Board meeting? In your own office?

• If these images had been drawn by a student for a class project, would they be appropriate?

Apparently, the committee members are comfortable with making available to other people’s minor children a book with drawings depicting strap-on dildos and dialogue about tasting one’s own vaginal secretions. If so, then students should be free to draw such pictures in art class and write such dialogue in English papers.

Either those committee members are ignorant or they’re too cowardly to stand for truth in a tyrannical public school culture rife with systemic leftist bigotry.

But it gets worse. The book challenge then moved on to the board of education where six of the seven board members voted to retain Gender Queer. Here are some of the rationalizations offered by adults who lack the courage, wisdom, and intelligence to serve in any school leadership position.

First up was Brad Paulsen who said this:

One of the data points I’ve heard recently, um, that I believe is true—I haven’t validated this, but I’ve seen it in a couple different locations—that 70 percent of our LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide. And so, I thought about the consequences of our vote on those students and those members of our community. And so, I … I kind of asked myself, you know, depending on our vote, can we just help one person, one student that’s going through this, and if we can, that makes me feel good. And so, with those, um, with that thinking and all the conversations we had, when I vote, I’m going to say yes.

I kid you not, Paulsen said that.

Maybe the fact that I’m not a statistician explains why I have no idea what “70 percent of LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide” means. Perhaps at the next board meeting, Paulsen could explain to his community exactly what it means. That should give him ample time to validate the data point he cited.

And perhaps at the next board meeting, he could answer these questions:

Since he used this data point as justification for retaining Gender Queer, should he have “validated” it?

Does he have conclusive, research-based evidence for his bizarre contention that reading Gender Queer will prevent suicides of “LGBTQ” youth?

Since many young adults are detransitioning; telling their tragic stories of suffering and regret; and blaming social media, doctors, and schools for affirming their “trans” identities, should school libraries request from publishing companies books that tell those stories? Wouldn’t Paulsen feel good if one person could be spared such suffering by reading them?

What if reading Gender Queer harms one person? What if reading it exacerbates confusion or contributes to a decision that has permanent and lifelong consequences and which they may later regret? Would the harm done to one such teen be sufficient justification for removing Gender Queer from the high school library?

Will Wheaton high schools purchase other books that include graphic depictions of and dialogue about sex toys and sex acts? Could those books include photos rather than cartoon drawings as long as someone could argue that one person may be helped by reading them? Would Paulsen et al. support the purchase of a memoir that depicts a woman’s journey to becoming a consensual non-monogamist, replete with graphic images of her sexual journey with multiple people? If not, why not?

(As a related aside, do any of the Wheaton high schools carry Abigail Shrier’s important and compelling book titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters?)

Board member Susan Booton followed Paulsen and began by asserting her “deep thinker” bona fides, by which she meant that she self-identifies as a deep thinker. The evidence, however, suggests the opposite.

She echoed Paulsen by saying that “the LGBTQ community struggles with suicide and harm to self at a much higher rate than our cisgender peers.” What she seems not to have thought deeply about is whether an obscene memoir carried in a public school library will reduce self-harm.

Booton claims the district must “honor all stories.” Does that include the stories of other underrepresented groups, like zoophiles? If not, why not? They too are marginalized and shamed.

Booton defers to the judgment of “professional librarians” who choose the books for the district’s book collections. She seems to believe that a degree in library science confers on them some special knowledge about and expertise in making moral judgments about obscenity.

What Booton doesn’t share is how the library book collection game is rigged.

Librarians create what are called “Collection Development Policies” that recommend, for example, purchasing books that are “positively reviewed” by at least two “professionally recognized review journals.” Surprise, surprise, the professionally recognized review journals are controlled by leftists who either don’t review or review negatively conservative books.

In addition, publishing companies gatekeep at an even earlier de facto censorship stage. Publishing companies won’t publish books written from a conservative perspective on sexuality, so there are none to be reviewed. Leftists can ban books with carefree abandon because their banning is concealed from the public. Can’t be accused of banning books when you don’t purchase them.

Deep thinker Booton doesn’t see how “removing this book helps” the mental health “crisis that we’re facing in this—in our world.” While helping mental health crises is a noble endeavor, is it the task of public school English teachers and librarians? Does Boone wonder why, during this unprecedented time of approval and even celebration of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, “LGBTQ” adolescents are suffering so tremendously? Why aren’t conservative kids whose beliefs and feelings are mocked and scorned in schools and the culture at large experiencing such high rates of suicide? Does the troubling degree of suffering experienced by “LGBTQ” youth not lead Booton to ask hard questions on whether “progressive” sexuality dogma is harming kids?

In addition to assuming without proving that Gender Queer may help one “LGBTQ” teen, board member David Long believes that strap-on dildo sex and vagina-tasting scenes are acceptable as long as they’re brief. Wiser adults would argue that no matter how brief, the presence of scenes so repugnant and controversial render a text unsuitable in schools funded by taxpayers.

The board chair, Ms. Chris Crabtree concluded by making the inane argument that the book should remain in district libraries in order to show that “this board cares about kids, it cares about the LGBTQ+ community.”

Choosing to remove one book because of egregiously obscene drawings and dialogue that violate school policy means the school doesn’t care about the LGBTQ+ community? Is the board so myopic and uncreative that they are unable to find other ways to show students they care?

Moreover, does caring require affirmation of all student feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts? Is it the business of public school leaders to affirm arguable ontological and moral assumptions on controversial topics?

Board member Rob Hanlon emoted about love, loneliness, shame, and isolation, implying that the removal of Gender Queer will increase loneliness, shame, and isolation, and keeping it will increase love for “LGBTQ” students. What a bunch of hooey.

There’s a lot of hooey spouted by school leaders struggling mightily to defend the indefensible. They cite prizes awarded to obscene books by leftist organizations as just justification for purchasing, recommending, and teaching garbage to kids. They also cite the lousy decisions of other schools to purchase, recommend, and teach garbage to kids as the reason to follow suit.  Let’s call that the lemming defense.

What was notably missing in all the claptrap was any discussion about the virtue of modesty and whether this book may further erode what little remains of respect for modesty in our coarse, unsafe culture.

Reminder to school boards, administrators, and teachers: Teachers are public servants hired to teach math, science, literature, world languages, social studies, and P.E. They are not hired to butt in to the emotional, moral, and psychological lives of other people’s children.

***UPDATED with additional information***

In a post on a Facebook page called “Friends of District 58 in Downers Grove,” someone posted an ad for an upcoming visit from “Trans Santa and Dr. Claus” for little ones at the heretical First United Methodist Church of Downers Grove.

More details are provided on the Facebook Page of the “Elmhurst Pride Collective”:

Meet and take a photo with Trans Santa and Dr. Claus, read a festive story and participate in seasonal games and activities. … This event is also being filmed for a HBO Max documentary about Clauses from diverse backgrounds as they spread joy throughout the holiday season. The feature film will be released in 2022.

This festive visit with “Trans” Santa is the institutional equivalent of a pervert cruising a neighborhood offering candy to children to get in his car. Instead of abusing bodies, leftists are abusing the hearts and minds of vulnerable children.

If there are any theologically orthodox Christians remaining at this self-identifying “church,” they should exit now. Any church that would permit such an activity is an enemy of Christ that will one day suffer the consequences of intentionally leading young children astray. The “trans” ideology is anti-biblical and hurts all children.

Anderson Reed Voinovich

If selling doves in the Temple angered Jesus enough to use whips to drive the merchants out, how would he react to soul-stealing merchants luring children with captivating, glittering gewgaws? Don’t let your kids eat the poisoned apples. Any church leaders who facilitate, participate, or approve of this are wolves in sheep’s clothing who call evil good.

One of First United Methodist Church’s wolfish leaders who calls evil good is associate pastor Anna Kristine Voinovich who legally changed her name to “Andersen Reed Voinovich” in Jan. 2021 and now uses the pronouns “they/them/theirs.

No wonder Downers Grove High School has leaders like Superintendent Hank Thiele and a school board who are doing likewise by defending the use of taxpayer money to purchase obscene material (e.g., Maia Kobabe’s comic book Gender Queer) that promotes evil ideas to minors.

What Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” applies today. Many contemporary churches are now arch supporters of unbiblical ideas about sex and sexuality:

The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

The First United Methodist Church is far worse than weak and ineffectual, because it speaks with the certain, arrogant, and evil voice of the tempter and father of lies.

“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

Chicago Sun-Times education reporter Nader Issa offers a classic example of biased opinion writing masquerading as objective reporting in his “news” narratives about a recent controversy in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove over an obscene “graphic memoir.” The memoir, titled Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, may sound familiar to IFI readers. I wrote this about her memoir in early August 2021:

Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer: A Memoir, which is carried in high school libraries, tells the peculiar tale of her journey to her “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual woman with a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man.

The far-left American Library Association awarded Kobabe an Alex Award for her “graphic” memoir. Her memoir is graphic in both senses of the word. It’s a sexually explicit, 240-page comic book about her journey into sexual confusion and perversion. Kobabe, who uses the “Spivak” pronouns ey/eir/em, also teaches art workshops to middle school children, mostly, she says, “AFAB” girls, which means “assigned female at birth.” Kobabe evidently doesn’t know that children aren’t assigned either a sex or “gender identity” at birth. That’s not a thing obstetricians do. Obstetricians identify the objective sex of babies at birth, a characteristic that never changes.

Public school kerfuffles over Kobabe’s obscene memoir have been justifiably emerging as parents learn that their children’s schools carry it, and one of those kerfuffles took place at a Downers Grove School Board meeting on November 15.

Issa mischaracterizes community criticism of the book as an “attack on literature” about “gender.” What in Issa’s view distinguishes an attack from criticism? And does he think that books about “gender” that don’t include obscene language and images would be under similar “attack”?

Issa continues his sly editorializing. He says the “attack” was perpetrated by “conservative protesters” and “some parents.” Notice the adjective “some,” which suggests that the attack was perpetrated mainly by conservative protestors with just a few parents. Issa, however, doesn’t provide any details. How many of the “conservative protesters” were district taxpayers? How many of the attendees approve of Gender Queer? How many of the attendees who approve of Gender Queer were parents? How many of the attendees who approve of Gender Queer were district taxpayers as opposed to outside leftist agitators? And why does Issa identify opponents of Gender Queer as “conservative” five times in the two articles he has written but doesn’t refer to supporters of the obscene book as “progressive” even once?

Issa then said that “Some critics have claimed children were being exposed to ‘homoerotic’ or ‘pornographic’ language and images.” Issa could have written “some critics oppose children being exposed to homoerotic and pornographic language and images,” but instead he wrote “some critics have claimed children were being exposed to” such language and images. Some have “claimed”? Seriously? Can any honest person deny that Kobabe’s comic book includes homoerotic and pornographic language and images? If images of two women engaged in sex using a dildo is not homoerotic and pornographic, what is?

The paranoid Issa implies critics are part of a vast right-wing conspiracy of “conservative politicians, activists, commentators and small networks of parents” to “denounce and ban progressive teachings in school.” He’s unfortunately right on two things; “progressives” are the peddlers of deviant and graphic sexuality, and they are using public schools to disseminate their sexuality ideology.

If Issa is bothered by the shared goals of conservative politicians, activists, commentators, and small networks of parents who are working toward cleansing schools of controversial leftist materials, he must really be troubled by the shared goals of leftist politicians, activists, academicians, commentators, and large networks of parents to systemically entrench leftist ideas about sexuality (and race) in curricula, resources, professional development, and activities.

Just as Issa referred to “some” parents and said some critics have “claimed” in order to discount the views of critics of Gender Queer, he also referred to “small” networks of parents. Perhaps Issa isn’t aware of the intimidation, bullying, mockery, name-calling, and shaming conservative taxpayers experience when they criticize pro-“LGBTQ” resources used in schools to advance leftist assumptions.

And perhaps Issa didn’t realize that “small networks” of conservative parents are now the minority, and minority voices are all the rage. Maybe Issa is an ideological neanderthal who believes might and numbers make right.

Issa dismisses the offensiveness of Gender Queer by saying it’s only “A few pages that include illustrations of sexual acts” that “have drawn the bulk of the ire.” First, it’s not just obscene drawings about which critics are angry. It’s also obscene language.

Second, how many pages of obscene images would it take to render a novel, memoir, or comic book inappropriate for purchase with taxpayer dollars for minors?

Issa calls attention to the “other students, parents and community members” who see the book as a “vital tool for youth discovering their identity and any efforts to ban it as censorship.”

Please note that Issa did not say a “few other students, parents, and community members” or “some other students, parents and community members” think Gender Queer is a “vital tool.” The diminishing qualifiers “some” and “few” are reserved for conservatives.

Vital? Really? Gender Queer is necessary to the continuation of life? However did kids survive before Kobabe wrote her obscene comic book?

The accusations of censorship and book-banning are curious. When leftist teachers decide that a book’s content is offensive or age-inappropriate and choose not to teach it, it’s called “text-selection.” When conservatives decide that a book is content- or age-inappropriate, leftists call it censorship or book-banning.

I wonder how many books the Downers Grove high schools have that critique leftist gender theory? How many resources do they have about detransitioners? If the answer is none, why would that be?

Issa didn’t mention whether there are any leftist politicians, activists, commentators, and networks of parents who share the goal of keeping Gender Queer and other obscene novels and plays in school libraries.

Issa mentioned that three students spoke in favor of keeping Gender Queer in the library. One student defended it by saying, that “it’s not being forced upon” students. Well, I guess Downers Grove parents should be thankful that teachers aren’t forcing their children to read it, but that comment fails to address the issue. The issue is, should taxpayer subsidized schools purchase and make available to minor students obscene material. Any parents who want their child to read Gender Queer can buy it for them, or kids can buy it themselves.

An 18-year-old student shared that Gender Queer “has scenes in it that are mature and sexual … [but] it’s not like we haven’t been given books with sex in them before.” Ain’t that the truth. School libraries and curricula are chock full of Young Adult (YA) books with graphic sex. Gender Queer is not an isolated library purchase. I would, however, dispute the claim that the obscene scenes in Gender Queer are “mature.” In this context, “mature” is a euphemism for vulgar and obscene.

The 18-year-old, Josiah Poynter, continued: “Inclusion matters to young people. … This is why we must have this book in our school’s library. Inclusion brings an opportunity to grow in a safe environment.”

Poynter is right. Teens and virtually every other human want to feel included, but inclusion must not trump truth. Inclusion must not entail affirming all feelings, beliefs, and acts. Neither inclusion nor the provision of a safe environment should entail the eradication of all moral boundaries.

According to Issa, Superintendent Hank Thiele said Gender Queer “met the district’s requirements for inclusion in its library.” Yikes. Someone better take a close critical look at those requirements.

In Issa’s second article on the Downers Grove dust-up, Democrat U.S. Representative Sean Casten made this asinine comment:

Let’s be really blunt about this. If you are a grown adult and you are walking through a library in an elementary school or high school and having sexual thoughts, you are the problem. It ain’t the book.

Let’s be really blunt about Casten. If he thinks adults who oppose taxpayer-funded schools spending taxpayer funds to make obscene garbage like Gender Queer available to minors are “having sexual thoughts,” then he’s ignorant, creepy, and unfit for office. But this is what we should expect from a man who admires Dan Savage.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Downers-Grove-HS-Obscene-Books-Biased-Journalism.mp3

At the most recent School District 200 Board Meeting in Wheaton, Illinois, new school board member and cunning rhetorician, Mary Yeboah, Director of Graduate Student Life at Wheaton College, posed six questions to the board,  beginning with a prefatory statement that let the woke cat out of the bag:

I would like to ask six rhetorical questions regarding the proposed October 10th, 2022 and October 9th, 2023 no-school all-grades Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day in relation to district purposes outlined in the mission of School District 200, Vision 2022, and the portrait of a graduate work. To be very clear, these are not questions that I expect you to answer right now. I am asking them for the benefit of reflective thinking for the district, especially in the month leading up to the approval of these calendars.

One, does the District 200 administration recognize the impact of holidays, statues, and other memorials on shaping school culture, which in turn shapes student experiences and outcomes?

Two, does the District 200 administration consider celebrating extreme violence, theft, genocide, and dehumanization to be in line with the study of social science to help students develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the benefit of the global society in which they live?

Three, does the District 200 administration affirm the accurate telling of history and recognize the impossibility of “discovering” land already inhabited?

Four, does the District 200 administration take into consideration the perspectives of Indigenous people regarding this particular calendar event?

Five, could maintaining this District 200 calendar event unintentionally support a myth of U.S. exceptionalism that could undermine district efforts to create diverse, inclusive schools for all children?

Lastly, does this calendar event advance the vision and mission of District 200 goals? And if it does not, must it remain despite state-level support?

It was so considerate of Yeboah to make very clear that she didn’t expect her six loaded questions to be answered immediately. It was also odd in that she had declared these were rhetorical questions, which are questions intended to make a point—not to be answered.

After some reflective thinking, I have some reflective thoughts and questions on Yeboah’s questions.

1.) Does Yeboah recognize the impact of using a leftist lens through which to view, socially construct, revise, and impose a particular interpretation of the meaning of holidays, statues, and other memorials, which in turn shapes student experiences, beliefs, and outcomes—including outcomes like the 2020 riots?

2.) Yeboah’s second question presumes an astonishing premise that she doesn’t even attempt to prove: She presumes that Columbus Day is a celebration of “extreme violence, theft, genocide, and dehumanization.” That is akin to saying Martin Luther King Day is a celebration of plagiarism, marital infidelity, and the exploitation of women.

What school has ever used Columbus Day to celebrate extreme violence, theft, genocide, or dehumanization?

Historian Victor Davis Hanson offers a relevant critique of the impulse that animates Yeboah:

Campuses and Western critics in the last half-century have turned a once risk-taking and heroic Christopher Columbus into an evil emissary of disease and destruction. History is now seen as one-dimensional melodrama in which our contemporary duty is to pick sinners and saints of the past based on our own modern (quite imperfect) perceptions of morality and then judge them worthy of either hagiography or banishment from memory.

And Hanson shares a fact inconvenient to the narrative of those who love to hate America:

[K]nocking down images of Columbus will not change the fact that millions of indigenous people in Central America and Mexico are currently abandoning their ancestral homelands and emigrating northward to quite different landscapes that reflect European and American traditions and political, economic, and cultural values.

3.) Does Yeboah affirm the accurate telling of history? Does Yeboah believe children at every age should be alerted to every serious foible, sin, or moral failing of every human involved in significant historical events or achievements? Should children of every age be taught about MLK Jr.’s significant moral failings? Should children of every age be taught the sordid stories of the abuse of women by John F. Kennedy and his lady-killer brother Ted Kennedy? Should kindergartners be taught that Harvey Milk was a homosexual ephebophile who acted on his sexual interest in teenage boys?

Regarding Yeboah’s concern about the impossibility of “discovering” an already inhabited land: Good teachers should and do explain that “discover” means “to obtain knowledge of something through observation, search, or study.” Benjamin Franklin “discovered” electricity in this sense. James Wilson Marshall “discovered” gold at Sutter’s Mill in this sense. The gold was always there in the ground. Erasmus Jacobs, son of a poor Boer farmer in South Africa “discovered” diamonds along the banks of the Orange River—diamonds that had always been there.

4.) Does Yeboah consider the perspectives of indigenous people about celebrating their histories of extreme violence, theft, genocide, and dehumanization on Indigenous People’s Day?

5.) In her fifth point, Yeboah again presumes a premise she doesn’t attempt to prove: In her fifth rhetorical question, she presumes that American exceptionalism is a myth. But is it? What objective standards or criteria has Yeboah applied to conclude that America is not exceptional?

6.) Yeboah implies that honoring Christopher Columbus’ exploratory achievement and how it transformed the world violates the vision and mission of District 200, which are here set forth:

Our vision is to be an exemplary, student-focused school district that is highly regarded for the competence and character of our students and people, programs, and learning environment.

Our mission is to inspire, encourage, and challenge, and to support all students to reach their highest level of learning and personal development.

Yeboah has yet to make her case that honoring a history-making explorer undermines the development of competence and character, or how it undermines the mission to inspire, encourage, and challenge students to reach their highest level of learning and personal development. Do District 200 taxpayers even know how District 200 distinguishes between good character and bad?

Yeboah’s reference to the vision and mission of District 200 raises other questions:

• How does the sexual integration of restrooms and locker rooms support all students to reach their highest level of personal development and character?

• How does the wildly obscene  (*WARNING*) graphic novel/memoir Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, which is available in both District 200 high school libraries, foster character and personal development?

• How was the invitation to lesbian activist Robin Stevenson, who promotes cultural approval of both the “LGBT” ideology and the legalized slaughter of the unborn, to speak to 8-11-year-olds at Longfellow Elementary School in Wheaton supposed to foster character and personal development?

• How did the offensive student drawings defacing the walls of Monroe Middle School through positive portrayals of homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation, some accompanied by ignorant and troubling captions, contribute to character development?

In a Facebook post, Yeboah announced she’s all in for “anti-racism,” which everyone should know by now is a euphemism for anti-white racism.

In an upcoming “Table Talk” at Wheaton College, “Topics for White students” include “Invisible Racism” with guest speaker Mary Yeboah.

Yeboah is also a promoter of the  controversial “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” that garnered nationwide condemnation, including by National Review.

In a Feb. 7, 2021 Facebook post, Yeboah admits that one of her “favorite scholars” is Tyrone Howard who wrote the book All Students Must Thrive. Howard’s publisher writes that Howard’s book “brings together three frameworks relevant for equity in schools–wellness, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory.”

If there’s any doubt about Yeboah’s “progressive” bona fides, this should dispel it: In 2020, as BLM was destroying cities across the country, Yeboah was part of a “white moms” group in Wheaton that created signs to encourage support–including financial support–for the Black Lives Matter organization, which is hell-bent on destroying the nuclear family and normalizing homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation.

And Yeboah worries that Columbus Day will undermine character development in children? Sheesh

Public schools are no longer places that foster character development or provide the highest level of learning. Get your kids out now.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Wheaton-Illinois-School-Districts-Wokest-Board-Member.mp3

**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:

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

The contexts and materials “progressives” use to warp the hearts and minds of children on sexuality are far too numerous to list. The pro-homo/pro-sex-impersonation propaganda campaigns in government schools, publicly funded libraries, and children’s programming are both bold and ubiquitous. The sexually disordered among us no longer feel the need to hide their intentions to lure children into their deceptive world. Today they can get jobs in elementary schools, public library children’s departments, and the colorful cartoon universes that thrive on Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and Cartoon Network from which they light up the viral world and darken children’s worlds.

By now virtually everyone has heard about the recent viral sensation, an episode of the cartoon show Muppet Babies in which the children’s classic Cinderella is retold as a “trans”-cultist fantasy for preschoolers. Baby Gonzo is depicted as a cross-dresser wannabe who longs to go the ball dressed as a princess. After a heartstrings-pulling scene in which a pitiable baby Gonzo sadly shares that he won’t wear the princess gown of his dreams because he doesn’t want to “upset anyone,” his “fairy ratfather” grants his wish to attend the ball in a princess gown. At the ball where he identifies as his drag persona Gonzorella, Gonzo is unrecognizable to his friends. After the ball when his friends discover he was Gonzorella and ask why he didn’t tell them, he says—pitiably again—that he didn’t want to upset them. Duly chastised, baby Piggy, apologizes and repents of her prior belief that princess gowns are for girls.

Ignorant wokesters with metaphysical delusions and bent sexual drives have tossed away those unnecessary trench coats of invisibility. They know that preschool is the ideal age to manipulate the emotions of children on complex issues—the nature and implications of which preschoolers can’t possibly understand—and wokesters know they can do their manipulating openly.

Tragically, Muppet Babies was not the first or only animator’s foray into children’s propaganda. Another such effort is Steven’s Universe on the Cartoon Network created by the well-known non-binary, bisexual Rebecca Sugar. The Peabody award-winning series works tenaciously to blur the distinctions between male and female and to normalize homosexuality.

NPR reported that “Rebecca Sugar is one of the many animators who’ve been pushing—successfully—for more overt queer representation in cartoons.”

The increase in the amount of “queer” representation is staggering:

A new database from Insider confirms more than 250 LGBTQ+ characters in children’s cartoons dating back to 1983. And if you look at the data from 2010 through 2020—especially in the latter five years—the representation of overtly queer characters skyrockets. …

They say what makes shows during this decade so special is that it’s not just a handful of tokenized, possibly gay characters living in a straight world. The baseline narratives of these shows have LGBTQ lives at the center of them.

Abbey White, reporter for the Inside database, waxes enthusiastic about “queer” propaganda for children:

“I think about Danger & Eggs, I think about She-Ra, Steven Universe [and] just how overtly queer these cartoons are. … That’s really exciting to see people queering their entire narratives in ways that I think reach not just children but a broader audience.”

Sexually perverse, age-inappropriate content on Disney and Netflix makes a huge cultural splash, while even more subversive content hides in plain sight in libraries creates barely a ripple.

Libraries in public elementary, middle, and high schools are brimming with books that affirm leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, including some that would have been deemed obscene and pornographic before those terms were rendered obsolete by moral anarchists. An Internet search for Young Adult (YA) “LGBT” fiction—which is intended for children ages 12-18—yields countless lists of recommended books.

One influential proponent of YA “LGBT” fiction is 48-year-old homosexual author of several YA novels that affirm homosexuality, David Levithan, who serves as the senior editor of Scholastic, the well-known children’s book publisher.

A 2015 article about Levithan, who claims he’s been “out” since nursery school and has a homosexual uncle, confirms the role of YA fiction in transforming culture:

The rising popularity of YA novels has also increased their power as educational tools.

Ironically, in this article, Levithan writes this about librarians and teachers:

You’re not a librarian to keep books out of the hands of children. … [T]here are clearly many [teachers] who bring their own bias to work when they are not supposed to.

Is Levithan asserting that there are no “progressive” teachers who bring their bias against theologically orthodox Christian views to work? Is he claiming that librarians would happily include books about teens who resist their homoerotic feelings or about adults who have chosen to leave homosexual lives—assuming any such books could get through the bigoted, intolerant censors in publishing companies and book review organizations?

While “progressives” argue that all identities should be represented in library collections, they really mean all identities they deem morally justifiable. Stories about teens or adults who subordinate erotic predilections to religious convictions in publicly funded libraries? No way. Stories about homoeroticism, cross-sex impersonation, kink, and polyamory? Absolutely.

CAUTION: Pornographic cartoons of two women from Kobabe’s memoir.

Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer: A Memoir, which is carried in high school libraries, tells her peculiar tale of her journey to her “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual woman with a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man.

The far-left American Library Association awarded Kobabe an Alex Award for her “graphic” memoir. Her memoir is graphic in both senses of the word. It’s a sexually explicit, 240-page comic book. Kobabe, who uses the “Spivak” pronouns ey/eir/em, also teaches art workshops to middle school children, mostly, she says, “AFAB” girls, which means “assigned female at birth.” Kobabe evidently doesn’t know that children aren’t assigned either a sex or “gender identity” at birth. That’s not a thing obstetricians do. Obstetricians identify the objective sex of babies at birth, a characteristic that never changes.

Judging from the flood of propaganda polluting culture, it appears oppressive “progressives” take far more seriously Aristotle’s oft-quoted statement, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man” than do conservatives.  And this flood of propaganda aimed like Cupid’s arrow at the hearts of children—and, therefore, the heart of civilization—will not soon be stemmed.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Warping-Childrens-Hearts-and-Minds.mp3