Conservative activists, led by a local pastor and outspoken Israel advocate, pushed the district, Mission CISD, to excise books mostly about gender, sexuality and race. Their demands represented an extreme version of a nationwide culture war over books that has played out in recent years — and ensnared a number of books with Jewish themes.
In Mission, the long list of books on the chopping block includes a recent illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary; both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus”; “The Fixer,” Bernard Malamud’s novel about a historical instance of antisemitic blood libel; and “Kasher in the Rye,” a ribald memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher.
I am hellbent on protecting children from adults that will do them harm. If its only edge cases then why are you hellbent on putting rules in place to remove questionable books?
Because the rules are in place and curated by professionals. What I don’t want is every semi-educated group of extremists to have the ability to whine enough that they get important books banned.
Ah yes, “professionals”. After covid you guys should have learned how experts are not so expert. I dont want children to see books with sexual content in them, does that make me an extremist?
It’s quite clear one group of people only want morons dictating what people can do, as opposed to those who listen and trust experts (who have often spent their entire life’s acquirung knowledge in their area of speciality).
After all, who wants a doctor with 20yrs experience operating on their spleen, when Harry the butcher could do it.
You are right, I want to dictate that state funds cant be used to show sexual materials to children. I am guilty!
Pray tell- what is so sexy about The Diary of Anne Frank or Maus?
This is called a motte-and-bailey. We were discussing a group trying to ban books about the Holocaust, and the larger concept about groups of parents being able to ban anything by whining about it enough. You put forward a different argument you think is bullet proof about banning sexual content with the implication that this argument defends the much weaker argument about banning Holocaust books or whatever books the mob may choose.
Just pointing that out. It’s a common fallacy and one that feels right, it isn’t necessarily done intentionally.
The freakout about sexual content is fabricated and designed to play to emotions. School libraries already ban sexual content. There’s no smut or erotica at them. The small handful of books that people wanted to ban were either educational or were similar to many books that were not targeted by those parent groups and the sexual situations were not the focus of the book. The main similarity was that they were about LGBT sexualities.
Why was that book about Anne Frank objected?
You’ll protect children right until it affects your wallet. It’s not about children, it’s about control. Always has been.