The book-banning mania takes another absurd turn.
requires schools to remove books that depict a “sex act.” That statutory phrase has now helped unleash a frenzy of book-banning across the state, one that illustrates a core truth about these types of censorship directives.that their hazy drafting would prod educators to err on the side of censorship. Uncertain whether books or classroom discussions might run afoul of their state’s law, education officials might decide nixing them would be the “safer” option.
No one disputes that in plenty of cases materials depicting such acts should be removed. Nonetheless, the law and the subsequent lack of state guidance are plainly causing officials to cast a wide net. “Many literary classics have sex in them,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education programs at PEN America. “But now the term ‘sex act’ is turning into a blunt instrument to remove scores of books that have all kinds of literary merit and cultural significance.
But that separate batch also includes uncontroversial books that merely display tolerance for LGBTQ+ people or tell the life story of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson,Scholastic spokeswoman Anne Sparkman told me that thousands of book fairs have opted not to include that separate category of titles, which is highly unfortunate, but she also noted that thousands have included them. As Sparkman rightly pointed out, the haziness of many lawshas many local educators guessing at which books to exclude to avoid self-incrimination, and Scholastic — which opposes such laws on principle — understandably feels obliged to help them navigate this “ambiguity," even if there’s no easy way to do so.
Just as critics predicted, all this vagueness and uncertainty is actively encouraging local education officials to sweep ever more broadly, undertaking more and more book removals in a kind of ever-expanding vortex. In this, one might argue, those laws are functioning exactly as intended.
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