I recently stumbled across 20 U.S.C. §7906, which bans federal funds from being used to encourage sexual activity or distribute “legally obscene materials” in schools. One would think that this statute, especially when combined with 18 U.S.C. §1466A (which defines pornography vis-à-vis minors), would put an end to the battle over books such as Gender Queer in school libraries or Pride flags festooning classrooms. However, by redefining child abuse, leftists have also redefined what constitutes child obscenity.

We conservatives often accuse leftists of violating laws to carry out their social, economic, and political agendas. However, they are doing something more subtle and sinister. They are not violating the laws; they are rewriting language to change the meaning of existing laws.

The Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County was the first major leftist victory in this redefinition war. The Court held that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not have the only meaning that Congress could have intended in 1964 (i.e., the binary of men and women) but means, instead, whatever leftists say it means in the moment.

Image: X screen grab (click on the link to watch the video).

This decision was a defining Orwellian moment. As George Orwell explained in his essay, “The Principles of Newspeak,” which he appended to 1984, the entire point of Newspeak is to force language into limited, narrow channels that prohibit any ideas other than those the Party advances.

Thought control is the name of the game. Traditional word meanings are so bastardized that the party can have as a slogan “Freedom is Slavery,” and the masses will believe. That’s how the word “sex” was divorced from its ancient biological and cultural meanings and redefined to suit the Democrat party’s political and social needs.

The same principles apply to what constitutes child abuse. In the past, our culture mostly agreed about what constituted child abuse, which covered things such as inflicting severe pain on a child, breaking its skin or bones, or starving it. By the 1960s, though, that clear definition vanished in the rising debate about corporal punishment (should it be allowed at all and, if so, how much of it?).

Likewise, Americans opposed mutilating a child’s body. Subject to strong cultural exceptions such as circumcision or infant ear piercing, Americans all agreed that things such as Chinese-style foot-binding were a no-no. Disputes existed at the margins, not the center of society.

With the transgender movement, though, the left changed the terms of the child abuse debate. While society as a whole once agreed that it was child mutilation to give growing children drugs that destroy their bones, sterilize them, or trigger cancer, or to amputate entire sexual organs such as breasts or penises, leftists redefined terms so that it became child abuse to withhold those drugs or surgeries. That’s how California’s legislature passed a law holding that parents would lose custody for refusing a child’s demand for dangerous drugs and mutilating surgery. (Gavin Newsom, with an eye to the White House, vetoed the law.)

By redefining child abuse, leftists have successfully redefined what constitutes obscenity in schools. Let me explain.

The “Strengthening and Improvement of Elementary and Secondary Schools Act” (20 U.S.C. Chapter 70) has all sorts of provisions for giving federal taxpayer money to schools across America. Section 7906 of that Act defines how funds may not be used, and it states in relevant part that:

No funds under this chapter may be used—

[snip]

(3) to develop or distribute materials, or operate programs or courses of instruction directed at youth, that are designed to promote or encourage sexual activity, whether homosexual or heterosexual;

(4) to distribute or to aid in the distribution by any organization of legally obscene materials to minors on school grounds;

If you’re wondering what constitutes “legally obscene material” under federal law when it comes to minors, 18 U.S.C. §1466A fills in the blanks. Visually obscene materials aren’t just photos or videos. Any visual depiction, including drawings and cartoons, meets the definition. These prohibited visual images are the types that show “a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”

And what is sexually explicit conduct? Those are images showing “a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex.” (Emphasis added.) The only thing that removes the above-described images from the law’s reach are those images that have “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

And it’s that caveat that gets us back to Orwell’s world. When we conservatives think of sexually explicit materials in school, we think back to the kind of material that was taught in sex ed classes for decades after WWII. These were purely biological in nature, with clinical outline drawings showing reproductive systems, along with instructions about menstruation and pregnancy. Science was the name of the game.

Now, though, our children’s public schools are awash in lovingly explicit images of sex, primarily homosexual sex (with Gender Queer being the most famous but by no means the only example). Schools and classrooms also relentlessly promote non-heterosexual sexualities and non-biological “sexual identities.”

So why aren’t teachers and school administrators being dragged off in chains for the criminal offense of distributing obscene materials to minors, and why aren’t the schools promoting all this rampant sexuality shut off from federal funds? Again, this is where Orwell comes in.

Under the new rubric, failing to affirm children’s non-standard heterosexual sexuality is a form of child abuse. That means that the materials aren’t being distributed for prurient reasons (i.e., grooming or the adults’ sexual pleasure). Instead, they are allegedly scientifically necessary to validate children’s mental health needs.

Thus, Leftists are not violating existing laws. It is we conservatives who are depriving children of material essential to their physical and mental well-being. We are failing in our educational obligations.

By aggressively shifting the Overton Window towards the fetishistic end of homosexuality over the last thirty years, leftists have effectively nullified child obscenity laws. Unless we change the culture, federal laws will not help remove pornography from American schools or protect taxpayers from being forced to fund it.