DoE will now have a Book Czar

The Biden administration was scheduled to hold, “the largest PRIDE celebration in White House history” today, said WH Domestic Policy Adviser, Neera Tandem. Although the event was moved to this coming Saturday (thanks to the Canadian wildfires) it didn’t stop President Biden from sharing a slew of new actions he’ll be taking in order to ensure that the LGBTQIA+ community is kept ‘safe’.”

Amongst these new initiatives is the creation of a new role within the Department of Education. The DoE will appoint a new coordinator who will specifically deal with, “the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students.” This book “coordinator” will reside within the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and we can only assume we will be hearing plenty from him/her in the coming months and years, especially if there is another term for #46.

You see what’s happening here, right?

First of all, let’s be clear that the vast majority of what is happening in school districts and libraries are not book “bans.” When media personalities or politicians categorize schools deliberating and choosing to not have a book in their circulation as a “ban” it’s disingenuous and misleading. A ban is defined as, “an official or legal prohibition.” That’s very different than a district, along with the input of parents (paying taxes to keep these schools running, BTW,) and school board members making curation decisions. Schools have long had to make choices about what to keep on their shelves and what to let go. This isn’t new.

What is new is the onslaught of inappropriate and graphic material that is being forced into schools and public libraries. What’s new is that parents are getting mad at the sexualized material that is being defended by liberals and saying, “We don’t want this in our schools.”

We have to be truthful about what is really occurring. Book challenges have happened for all of time and there has never been a “book ban coordinator” within the Federal Government. Why now? Because a segment of our society has been manipulated into believing that parents who don’t want their children looking at porn are a literal danger to the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s absurd but the propaganda being pushed by this administration is convincing.

From the American Library Association’s website:

“A book challenge is a demand to remove a book from a library’s collection so that no one else can read it. Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Their aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color. 

“Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore,” said Caldwell-Stone. "The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police.”   

There are several glaring inaccuracies with this statement.

First: A book challenge isn’t a demand, it’s a request.

Second: A book challenge isn’t made so no one else can read said book, it’s a challenge because the person making it believes it to be inappropriate for the general population that will have access to it (namely children.) If someone wants that book, they are free to find it elsewhere, just not in that specific location, if the challenge is accepted.

Third: Simply because someone is challenging a book does not mean they are suppressing the voice of the author from the nation’s conversation. They are hoping to suppress their voice from a specific audience (again, namely children.)

Fourth: Challenges or “attempted book bans” are not a direct threat on a person’s constitutional rights because the book is not being legally removed from everywhere by the Federal Government. Every single book that the media categorizes as “banned” is still widely available.

On their website, the American Library Association admits that the vast majority of the content that is being challenged by parents includes LGBTQIA+ content but they never expound on what the content includes. Let’s review the “content” that the Biden Administration and the Department of Education think needs to be in public libraries and schools in order for the LGBTQIA+ community to feel safe, shall we?

Here are just four examples from the TOP 13 Banned Books of 2022.

Please understand that the ALA shares these books on its website and social media accounts often, decrying how unjust and Orwellian it is that these titles would be challenged. This is the material that they want children to have unfettered access to and this is why the Biden administration is appointing a Book Czar. It’s that important to them.

The White House statement recently made a statement. Remember the content of these books as you read:

"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 administration said in a statement.

The DOE will provide new trainings to schools nationwide on how book bans target specific communities and "create a hostile school environment may violate federal civil rights laws."

Vital resources? I think not.

Gone are the days when you said, “book ban” and it triggered thoughts of “To Kill A Mockingbird” or “The Bible.”

No, we aren’t arguing anymore about actual literature and the merits of books we may quibble over. We are having to fight so our kids don’t have the ability to easily obtain pornographic material IN THEIR PLACE OF LEARNING.

It’s a brave new world, indeed.