**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

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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What was once unthinkable has become unquestionable. And so, every Christian must know how to engage this transgender moment.

Imagine this scenario: Your 17-year-old daughter tells you she’s trapped in the wrong body, is really a boy, and wants hormone therapy to begin the process of transitioning. As her parent, you love your daughter, but you disagree. You want to look at other options to help her.

She decides to take you to court. Even though she’s a minor under your care, the judge decides your beliefs are a danger to your daughter, and takes her from your custody.

Well, imagine this scenario no more. That’s exactly what happened in Ohio recently.

And we shouldn’t be surprised. As Ryan Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation warns, Americans can expect more cases just like this one.

Anderson’s in-depth research of the transgender movement and sexual ideology is now available in his new book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.” And I don’t say this lightly, this book is one every single Christian needs to read and understand.

This is a movement with considerable momentum—in popular culture, education, and even public policy. It’s an evolving movement. Here’s what I mean: as Anderson points out, gender ideology used to be based on the idea that our sex (in other words our physical natures, including reproductive organs and hormones) was biological, but our gender was socially constructed.

Activists challenged traditional gender roles as being oppressive and too generalized. But today the movement claims that sex is not biological, but assigned at birth. As if the doctor makes a random decision to identify a child as male or female. That’s how, the popular theory goes, boys can be trapped in girl’s bodies, and vice versa.

This is, of course, a scientifically indefensible position, and assumes that deep in some part of one’s brain (though we’re not sure where), our true gender identity is located. The theory is advancing, not on its merits, but on political power and name-calling: that only bigots insist on biological realities.

What Anderson does so well in “When Harry Became Sally” is to articulate how transgender ideology is hopelessly tied up in contradictions. He’ll help you spot those contradictions and articulate them with clarity and kindness to others.

But even so, many Christians still wonder why they should care about this one. Maybe they are still wearied over the same-sex marriage battle, or like many of us, maybe this is one of those issue that hits a little too close to home.

Well, I think there are at least two reasons we should care. First, Christians have always proclaimed that our bodies matter. This is no trivial point of Christian theology. Scripture tells us that God made us in His image, male and female. That Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us, and that He was physically resurrected from the dead. We cannot go along with any ideology that denies God’s created order.

And the second reason we should care is, well, the children. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Transgender ideology is disproportionately aiming at children, teaching them that they are not the inherently valuable image bearers God created them to be. If we love our neighbors, especially the kids, we cannot remain silent on this one.

We will send you a copy of “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” as a thank you for your gift today. Visit BreakPoint.org to get your copy.  It will equip you to defend the truth of God’s plan for human sexuality and identity—and help those impacted by the transgender movement.

And if you come to our website, you’ll find other articles and teaching resources on this issue also.

This article was originally published at BreakPoint.org