A Gentle Reminder That Censoring Books Is Never A ‘Reasonable’ Solution

Conservatives are making the rounds again, placing op-eds and analytical pieces explaining how book bans aren't really book bans. For example, Education Weekpublished a columnby a pair of authors from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation trying to justify laws across the country that restrict and even remove certain texts from many public school libraries.

The authors, Max Eden and Jay Greene, wrote in their column that there is an overblown assumption that restricting particular texts for certain age groups is not banning. It is simply parental rights. Both go on to argue that these restrictions aren't, well, restrictions at all. The term book ban" is also utilized by critics of these policies for partisan purpose." They add that there is a considerable degree of these so-called restrictions being reasonable."

There is nothing reasonable about censorship, and you would have to be extremely misinformed if you assume that third graders are being required to read books the caliber of Fifty Shades of Gray.

At issue, in part, is LGBTQ+ subject material in books available to young adults. Greene is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He espouses the organization's worldview that material, such as the prize-winning young adult graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoirby illustrator Maia Kobabe, is somehow pornographic" in natureand should ultimately be banned.

Greene has recently writtenthat people shouldn't be concerned over book bans because it is a manufactured hysteria propagated by the news media. Whether that's true or not, he's justifying an act that would make some conservatives a few decades ago squirm: censoring authors at the public schools in their communities. The media may have overblown some of this, but in no way has the narrative of conservatives banning books arisen from political elites controlling the news.It's actually happening.

There is more than ample evidenceto suggestthat right-wingers, mainly social conservatives who have bought into the gender ideology' social contagion bullshit, are actively restricting and even prohibiting, in some cases, titles that deal with subject matter like sexuality, LGBTQ+, and related topics. Eden and Greene lose further credibility in their argument when their employers are actively supporting or tolerating the troubling screeds of conservative thought leaders laid out in a recent treatise on policy, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. I wroteabout the Mandate for Leadershipin August. Published by the right-wing astroturf outfit Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation is responsible for the book that openly calls for the First Amendment rights of those who propagate what they view as porn" to be suspended and imprisoned. To wit, my dears:

Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today:...children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries."

Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered."

Yeah, that's totally reasonable. Greene works for the man who wrote this, Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts. Greene's writing in Education Weekis particularly telling as it is a means to verify that this is the real intention of the post-Trump conservative movement.

This type of advocacy is also antithetical to the spirit of the First Amendment. Censorship can be called many different things. Censorship is a method used by the politically powerful to impose incompatible views of a few on everyone else.

Censorship isn't the solution. Moreeducationon these topics, including efforts to destigmatize certain groups and beliefs, is necessary.

Michael McGrady covers the tech side of the porn business, among other things.