President Joe Biden will appoint a new employee in the Department of Education to fight “book bans” in schools, according to an announcement from the White House. The new “coordinator” will offer legal guidance to school districts on fighting book challenges as part of a crusade to “Shield LGBTQI+ Americans from” attacks on their “civil rights.”
“Book bans” is the popular term on the Left describing growing efforts by parents across the country to remove books containing a variety of content they don't want children to see. While the battle often focuses on conservative objections to divisive racial ideology or transgenderism, the least partisan aspect is parents’ concerns about obscene sexual material that they continue to find on school library shelves.
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These include “coming-of-age” novels like Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, the most challenged book of 2022, and Mike Curato’s Flamer, both illustrated works. The former visually and quite graphically depicts oral sex between minors, among other acts and explicit situations, while the latter shows an erection and group masturbation, and instructs the young reader on the use of ... well, let's call them fetishistic sex toys.
The fact that such material is uncomfortably explicit is hardly disputed.
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis displayed images from the aforementioned books during a news conference, news companies cut their video feeds, helping him prove his point. There are also too many examples to count of school boards cutting the microphones of people who merely read pornographic books aloud at meetings to raise awareness.
Nevertheless, the profound ignorance and disingenuous rhetoric surrounding this issue have gotten so out of hand that the president of the United States is stepping in to defend the indefensible.
Then again, Biden has never actually addressed the explicit content that parents object to in a single one of his tirades.
Likewise, the White House’s statement is an incoherent mess of ideological talking points and literal nonsense. “Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to the stigma and isolation that LGBTQI+ people and other communities face,” the Biden administration declares.
The statement offers no explanation for how citizens peacefully petitioning their local school board to hold a vote on whether to remove a book is an affront to the democratic process. And how exactly are gay sex instruction manuals “vital” for “learning”? The White House won’t elaborate.
Come to think of it, what in the world does this issue have to do with “LGBTQI+” identities, which includes “intersex,” the exceedingly rare condition of being born with male and female body parts? How are these individuals under attack through book challenges?
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None of it makes sense because it doesn't have to. It only has to appeal to the radical base to which Biden panders. Those LGBT ideologues are happy to see a coming federal crackdown on communities that value the innocence of children, not to mention basic decency.
Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.