The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers’ union in the U.S., published a summer reading list for its latest issue that includes everything one would expect of such a politically muscular group.

A Sunday opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Dave Seminara relates:

Among its recommendations are “Gender Queer,” a graphic-novel memoir about “identifying outside the gender binary.” The book has been removed from many school libraries in Florida, where I live, but I checked it out at the public library.

I was shocked that a book marketed to young adults (12-18) has so much graphic content. Here’s a sexting dialogue from page 170: “I got a new strap-on harness today. I can’t wait to put it on you. I can’t wait to have your c— in my mouth—I’m going to give you the b— of your life. Then I want you inside me.” On the facing page, color sketches graphically depict this scene.

Seminara concludes by wondering aloud how the teachers’ unions, having been so scrutinized for their defense of school lockdowns, diminishing literacy scores, and strong-arming, would release to the public a reading list that promotes sexual content and practices that are well beyond what one would expect a twelve-year-old needs to understand the functions and purpose of sexual congress.

But the teachers’ unions are shameless and can afford to be. Apart from Scott Walker’s Act 10, which, as good as it was, did little to uproot entrenched political interests in Wisconsin’s public schools, many U.S. states cannot muster the stones to limit the powers of these groups — Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro being just the latest example of rote obedience to the pedagogic goon squads.

The unions need to be broken, and Republican candidates had better figure out messaging and policies that can wrest control from these groups while limiting the thus-far-successful ululations that typically come from those quarters. Teachers break out some posterboard, write “For the Kids,” and state governments just roll over and approve pay hikes. We even grant teachers two months every summer to take time off and work on their picketing skills — unreal.

The unions know this to be a war; they write as much on the covers of their publications.

As an unhappy recipient of the neaToday physical magazine, owing to my wife’s work, I see that June’s cover depicts an individual built like a brick smokehouse with a raised nose; her sneer seems calibrated to within .01 microfarads of perfectly disdainful capacitance. Alongside, read the words “We Will Not Erase History,” and an obvious shot at Florida and Texas, states that wisely demurred from teaching the Howard Zinn and Nikole Hannah-Jones histories.

Conservatives are correct to push sexually explicit books and bunk history from schools. Even better, we stop there and say, “It’s inappropriate in this space, but feel free to publish and purchase it on your own.” For that, the Right is accused of “book banning.” Hush. Weeds in my neighbor’s yard are no problem, but the second they cross into a shared space or my yard, I have the right to remove the lawn canker. The Right isn’t preventing the publication, lobbying against their sale, or revising them into alphabet soup. All we ask is that you keep your trash books to yourselves. That conservatives, Hays Code–enjoyers that we were, must act more like liberals than the self-described liberals is unacceptable.

Teachers’ unions are putting the “pink” in “Pinkerton” and offer nothing but grief and sophistry for their expense. Let us be done with them.