Why Texas Parents Want To ‘Ban Books’They are defending the innocence of children.
By Auguste Meyrat
March 9, 2022
Tensions are escalating in McKinney, Denton, Keller, and a host of other North Texas school districts over book bans in school libraries. On one side are parents—many of whom are using State Rep. Matt Krause’s list of objectionable books—who want to vouchsafe their children’s innocence and remove sexually explicit material from their children’s schools. On the other side are parents, like English professor Shulamith Armintor, who think such books offer solace to students who identify with the experiences depicted.
Commentators more removed from the matter generally side with the parents opposed to the ban. First, book banning just sounds bad and un-American. Second, they see little point in preserving kids’ innocence anyway. Challenging the moral values of young readers still learning to read, they argue, is “exactly what literature is supposed to do.”
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But the parents who support the removal of these books make a stronger case. They are right to champion the innocence of children and their right to have a truly safe space to learn about the world without being corrupted by it.
Further, the objections to removing such books are logically weak. To begin, to equate removing pornographic books from a school library with undermining the very purpose of literature is to miss the crux of the debate, which is whether the books in question are appropriate for young people. People aren’t discussing the literary merits of Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye or a biography of Michelle Obama, but whether children and adolescents should be reading something like the graphic novel Gender Queer, which takes readers on a “journey of gender identity and sexual orientation” and includes “a few pages of explicit illustrations depicting oral sex.”
It is fair to ask whether Gender Queer and other such books offer any educational benefit to students. They don’t seem to learn anything from this story. They don’t even get much practice reading, since it’s a graphic novel. More importantly, narratively, some guy exploring his (their?) sexuality and gender sounds incredibly dull. It’s hard to see how the inclusion of Gender Queer amounts to anything but the school library’s endorsement of LGBTQ ideology and a sexually active lifestyle.
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It should go without saying that children are hurt by viewing and internalizing sexually explicit content. Children lack the maturity and reasoning skills to process what they’re seeing. They are led to believe that sex and sexuality defines them and their relationships, and that validation from their equally immature peers determines everything. This creates tremendous stress for kids as they discover themselves and the world around them. It is fair to assume that the current mental health crisis among young people could be helped by a collective return to innocence.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-texas-parents-want-to-ban-books/
