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Posts tagged ‘books’

Biden Administration Demands Georgia Schools Show Pornography to Kids


BY: JORDAN BOYD | MAY 31, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/31/biden-education-bureaucrats-overrule-georgia-parents-to-protect-porn-in-schools/

Forsyth County School Board meeting Feb. 2022

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Bureaucrats in President Joe Biden’s Department of Education just put their thumb on the scale of a book dispute in Georgia by not only smearing parents’ concerns about sexually explicit books in schools but also leveraging their federal power to intimidate districts that have successfully purged porn from campuses. In the Biden administration’s latest attempt to weaponize an arm of the federal government against parents, the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) wrote a letter to Forsyth County Schools Superintendent Jeff Bearden on May 19 outlining everything it deemed wrong with the district’s decision to pull several inappropriate books from school bookshelves.

Not only did the federal agency demand that the district offer “supportive measures to students who may have been impacted by the book removal process,” but the OCR also ordered the Georgia school district to administer a “climate survey” to middle and high school students so bureaucrats can “assess whether additional steps need to be taken.”

The OCR predicated its probe into Forsyth schools on allegations from an unnamed complainant that the administration, at the bidding of parents, “created a hostile environment for students” based on race, color, or national origin. Using the Supreme Court’s expanded definition of “sex” as determined in the 5-4 Bostock v. Clayton County decision in 2020, the OCR also claimed it was investigating whether Forsyth County schools “created a hostile environment for students” based on sexual orientation and identity.

The Bostock ruling specifically pertained to sex differences in employment, not education. Still, after reviewing district documents, emails from parents to school staff, and school board meetings as well as interviewing several district staff, the Biden administration attempted to justify its involvement in this local education dispute by claiming it is a top enforcer of the 1972 Title IX and the 1964 Title VI laws.

“In my opinion, this is not about books,” Cindy Martin, an FCS mother, told The Federalist. “This is about the federal government using bully tactics against our school system to indoctrinate our children into their LGBTQ ideology.”

District and Parents Agree: Porn Shouldn’t Be in Schools

Clamor over inappropriate content in Forsyth schools first surfaced in 2021 when parents discovered several titles including sexually explicit material were made available by schools to their children. One parent told The Federalist that despite several attempts to contact the district, she never heard back until January 2022. After months of ignoring parents’ calls for change, the district called a District Media Committee meeting to independently discuss how to address ongoing concerns about unsuitable content in the classroom. By Jan. 21, 2022, FCS Superintendent Dr. Jeff Bearden asked the chief technology and information officer (CTIO) to “pull from school libraries books that were obviously sexually explicit or pornographic.”

“…how to address ongoing concerns about unsuitable content in the classroom”? Simple really. If you are uncomfortable reading the material Sunday Morning in Church Service, then should our children be READING IT?

“For us, it’s not about censorship because, obviously, students and parents have the right to choose to read whatever they want outside of the school,” FCS Chief Communications Officer Jennifer Caracciolo told one local media outlet at the time of the decision. “They can purchase it or they can go to the public library. But we have a responsibility whenever it comes to sexually explicit content in the walls of our buildings.” 

Following a review, the CTIO asked Forsyth County Principals to indefinitely pull nine books from “all school libraries” and restrict another six books to high schools only.

“The content in them was what we would consider pervasively vulgar, and it’s not about whether or not a parent or guardian liked or disliked the ideas contained in the book or liked or disliked the author or the author’s identity, we focused on content that was pervasively vulgar,” Caracciolo clarified.

For a while, it seemed like the schools and the parents were beginning to get on the same page. But the fight wasn’t over yet.

“The conservative parents in our community were grateful that the school chose to stop providing children with this harmful, low-quality material. It fantasizes sex and leads to negative consequences such as sexual harassment, teen pregnancy, disease, and poverty,” Martin said. “However, we had done intense research and knew that eight books did not even come close to the amount of sexual explicit books that needed to be removed. This is how and why the Mama Bears of Forsyth County formed. We expected the school to make the libraries a safe place for all children. A school system should never provide sexual reading material to children.”

Twisted Tales

During its investigation, the OCR was quick to overlook the role parents and taxpayers have the right to play in the education of children, instead complaining that “the District did not make an announcement to, or have other communication with, students about the removal of the books.”

The OCR admitted in its findings letter that the school administration made it clear that the books in question “had not been reviewed for LGBTQI+ content or moral dilemma issues, just sexual explicitness.” Yet, OCR accused FCS parents of making what it characterized as “negative comments about diversity and inclusion or critical race theory.”

“Many parents called for the removal of additional books, with most of their comments focused on sexually explicit content; however, some comments focused on removing books for reasons related to gender identity or sexual orientation,” the letter stated.

The OCR additionally accused the district of giving the “impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment.”

Several local media outlets also expressed outrage at the district’s decision and spread the lie that FCS leadership was “banning” books at the bidding of parents. The OCR, in turn, cited the media’s rage as proof that parents and the district somehow overstepped their bounds by protecting minors from sexually explicit content.

One Atlanta Journal-Constitution article lamented that “Juliet Takes a Breath,” a book known for, as Common Sense Media put it, “detailed scenes of kissing and lovemaking between two women, sexual fantasies, masturbation, and periods, as well as extensive discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity,” would no longer be available to students. Another book called “Monday’s Not Coming,” one reviewer noted, is filled with “homosexuality, promiscuity, intercourse, and prostitution” as well as child abuse. That book was sent “to local media center review committees for further analysis” by the school district.

Similar coverage dominated corporate media pages after the OCR’s letter was published in May.

Shortly after the school district pulled the handful of explicit books, parents gathered at a Feb. 15, 2022 Forsyth County Board of Education meeting to express their concern that children were being exposed to even more explicit books via the school system.

One attendee, Alison Hair, only got a few words into reading an excerpt from one of the other explicit library books that still sat on FCS shelves before she was cut off by the board for allegedly violating meeting rules.

“If you continue with your statement just please, we have other people that are younger in this [room],” one board member told Hair.

“If it is inappropriate to read in this building, then it is inappropriate, inappropriate to be in a library,” Hair said. “How dare you say ‘Oh, well, there’s minors in here.’ Wait, what is it? My son’s a minor and this book that you all have copies is in my son’s middle school.”

Hair’s frustrations were echoed by more than a dozen other parents.

“I have an 11-year-old and this is not allowed in our house nor would I allow him to pick this book up at Barnes and Noble or your school library that you provide for my children,” Ann Christopher, a mother to a Forsyth County middle schooler, said. “Also, you say respect the rules. You’re telling Alison to respect the rules. Excuse me. This is in my child’s face if he chose to check it out. What rules are you respecting for my child who can’t speak for [himself]?
I’m the one here to protect my child, nobody else is. That’s why we parents are here.”

In a complaint filed in July 2022, Mama Bears of Forsyth members Hair, who was barred from school board meetings after attempting to read from another explicit passage in March, and Martin alleged that the Forsyth County Board of Education violated their First Amendment rights as parents to speak up about what kind of reading materials their children are exposed to.

“This lawsuit does not try to resolve the question of which books should be available in school libraries, but instead addresses unlawful attempts to sanitize how parents speak about those books in the presence of elected officials and other adults,” the lawsuit states.

In February 2023, a judge ruled that the FCS board violated Hair and Martin’s constitutional rights and must pay $100,000 in legal fees.

Despite these particular books’ inappropriate content, parents’ ongoing pleas for the taxpayer-funded district to stop supplying pornographic material to children, and the district’s expensive legal defeat, multiple problematic books were eventually approved to return to school shelves, along with more than half a dozen other titles for high schools, after review by a committee.

The Biden administration’s OCR investigation and demand for a mea culpa from FCS over its decision to pull bad books is likely only going to deter the district from taking any further drastic action when it comes to porn and inappropriate content in schools.

FCS parents, Martin reassured The Federalist, are not deterred.

“Wake up parents,” Martin said.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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No, Age-Appropriate Library Restrictions Are Not ‘Book Bans’


BY: RAHEEM WILLIAMS | MARCH 15, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/15/no-age-appropriate-library-restrictions-are-not-book-bans/

kids section of a library where media claim book bans are taking effect
A public, taxpayer-funded entity refusing to purchase and disseminate a book does not constitute a ‘ban,’ contrary to media reports.

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Reports of book banning have proliferated throughout the media. Understandably, such claims should raise concern among free speech advocates. The ability to freely disseminate knowledge and challenge the status quo is a fundamental pillar of a free society. An illiberal act such as a book ban should be met with scorn by those who truly care about advancing society. However, behind claims of rampantly spreading censorship, a key question has been left unanswered. What’s a book ban?

The word ban is generally understood to mean a prohibition of a certain behavior, substance, or object. However, due to First Amendment constitutional protections and corresponding case law, it’s illegal for any government entity to outlaw the possession of a book. With very rare exceptions, there are no penalties for owning, buying, and selling books in America.

Yet media reports claim book bans are spreading like wildfires in states such as Florida and Texas. So how can that be?

Which Books Are Banned?

The issue is primarily a cultural tug-of-war taking place in public school libraries. The discovery of sexually explicit books on school bookshelves nationwide has sparked controversy.

Pen America is easily the most cited organization when it comes to book bans. The self-proclaimed “free speech” advocacy group is mentioned in almost every media report on the subject. Yet few Americans understand the very expansive definition of a “book ban” utilized by the organization. Pen America considers books “challenged for review,” but still available for student use, as “banned” even if the books haven’t been removed from the library. Pen America considers any book that’s available but age-restricted as “banned.” Moreover, several school districts have refuted the popular book ban list produced by Pen America, claiming the list contained books that were never removed from circulation in their respective libraries.

An expansive view of “book bans” creates a few problems. There’s an assumption that the government has a responsibility to produce and distribute every book in existence to school children free of charge. This may sound great until you consider that books often contain inaccurate, poorly sourced, or controversial information. I doubt anyone of reason would consider the exclusion of books such as Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (a Nazi manifesto), “The Anarchist Cookbook” (a bomb-building guide), and “The Turner Diaries” (a white supremacy recruitment novel) from our public K-12 libraries to be an illiberal attempt to suppress free speech.

Does Ideology Influence Book Selection?

Nonetheless, there’s reason to believe some librarians have injected their own bias into the procurement process. Writer Kirk Cameron has had his Christian children’s books rejected by publicly funded libraries that openly embrace drag queen story hours featuring pro-transgender book titles. At the time of writing, Pen America’s website produced nothing on the aforementioned controversies surrounding the rejection of conservative-themed books.

Additionally, the American Association of School Librarians grants an annual “Social Justice” award of $2,000 to librarians and $5,000 for new books to school librarians for devising a “program, unit, or event in support of social justice using resources of the school library.” Although one may agree with the decisions of a publicly funded library to promote or demote a certain viewpoint, it requires a substantial degree of denialism to pretend viewpoint discrimination isn’t happening.

Who Should Pick the Books?

A 5-4 Supreme Court Decision in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982) restricts school boards from removing books on the basis of subject matter, recognizing school libraries as special free speech zones. However, the dissenting justices argued that, because books can be obtained outside the school library and school board officials are democratically elected to handle affairs related to the management of the school, there are no First Amendment implications concerning the exclusion of certain materials. Furthermore, the view of school libraries as being crucial free speech zones seems antiquated in the age of social media and smartphones.

Maybe it’s time to question the idea that a government agency refusing to disseminate a book constitutes a ban of any sort. Public school libraries are taxpayer-funded entities. In our democratic society, we vote for policies that reflect our values and preferences. These voter preferences should manifest as we set priorities in public school education.

Just as many jurisdictions may refuse to provide bomb-building instruction, gunsmithing guides, and white supremacy manifestos to their students, school boards everywhere should be allowed to make reasonable value judgments concerning objectionable content.

Educators and librarians are humans with biases and policy preferences just like the rest of us. Deferring to them with no community oversight doesn’t prevent viewpoint discrimination; it just ensures it goes unchallenged.

Raheem Williams is a policy analyst at the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). He has worked for several liberty-based academic research centers and think tanks. He received his B.A. in economics from Florida International University and his M.A. in financial economics from the University of Detroit Mercy.

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Kirk Cameron Can’t Read His Children’s Book to Kids Unless He Dresses Like a Prostitute and Gyrates for Their Singles


BY: KYLEE GRISWOLD | DECEMBER 08, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/08/kirk-cameron-cant-read-his-childrens-book-to-kids-unless-he-dresses-like-a-prostitute-and-gyrates-for-their-singles/

Kirk Cameron side by side with drag queen
How does it go again? …Something, something ‘blessings of liberty’?

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The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and self-control. But the fruit of public libraries is faux diversity, drag queens, and rejection of the sexes — which is why the taxpayer-funded cesspools are “not interested” in giving Kirk Cameron a storytime slot to read his new children’s book on the fruit of the Spirit to kids.

The actor, writer, and producer “has not gotten a single ‘yes’ from the 50-plus public libraries his publisher has contacted so far,” Fox News reported in a Wednesday exclusive. According to Cameron’s publisher and Fox’s scouring of the libraries’ websites, “Many of the same libraries that won’t give Cameron a slot … are actively offering ‘drag queen’ story hours or similar programs for kids and young people.”

It’s not only drag queen story hours, where adult men derive pleasure from strapping on prosthetic breasts, painting theatrical contour all over their masculine faces, and sporting fishnet tights for an audience of children. These libraries reportedly host queer book clubs, a series called “Every Month Is Pride Month,” and so-called “get free help” events where attorneys and other volunteers help patrons fill out legal paperwork to change their names, record themselves as the opposite sex (or sexless entirely), and alter birth certificates, Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, IDs, and passports. But if you want to read to kids about gentleness, goodness, and kindness, it’s a hard no.

How does it go again? … Something, something “blessings of liberty”?

The self-important and self-appointed “principled conservatives” have expended much energy lecturing right-wing culture warriors who resist this debauchery. When conservatives took offense at libraries using their tax dollars to sponsor sexualized events that spit in the face of their deeply held religious beliefs, The Principled Conservatives™ were there with a finger wag and a condescending, First Amendment! Tsk! Viewpoint neutrality!

Drag queens reading to innocents is just one of those great “blessings of liberty,” went the spiel, and the right couldn’t possibly ban provocative cross-dressers from reading to kiddos in public spaces or else Christians would soon be banished from those same spaces.

Here’s a snippet from The New Yorker summarizing such an exchange from the debate between Sohrab Amari and David French (Mr. “Blessings of Liberty” himself):

Ahmari kept returning to the extremist complaint that Drag Queen Story Hours are being staged for children in public libraries. To him, these were a sign of “a five-alarm cultural fire.” … The same First Amendment principle that allows drag queens to read to children in public libraries had also allowed Christian groups to flourish, French said, by permitting them to organize in universities and other public spaces. “So, you would undermine viewpoint neutrality in First Amendment jurisprudence?” French asked. “Yeah, I would,” Ahmari said. French raised his arms in exasperation. “That’s a disaster, y’all!”

By “viewpoint neutrality,” French means the First Amendment’s right to free speech or freedom of religion applies evenly to different groups regardless of the viewpoints they espouse. But the idea that the American founders meant for the First Amendment to allow people to advocate for civilization-destroying behaviors is obscenely false. Nobody is morally obligated to be neutral about the gross immorality of discussing sex with other people’s kids, and the law should not be either, in theory or in practice.

Barring people from doing sex shows for kids in publicly funded venues is not against the Constitution, and it’s specious to argue that if you insist there are constitutional limits on speech and this is precisely one, that you’re somehow a proponent of “big government” or “against the free market.” There is no free market for children. And there are ways to establish reasonable and constitutional limits on speech — such as withholding government funding from events and venues that peddle books and activities about sex for children — something many conservatives are striving to do even if the self-described principled wing is too lazy or too cowardly to do that intellectual and ground-game work.

Furthermore, several years have now passed since the aforementioned “principled” prognosis, and the five-alarm cultural fire has consumed the public square; LGBT ideologues who have never cared about viewpoint neutrality dominate every government institution. If you haven’t noticed, drag queen story hours are only getting stronger, and Christians are still being barred from the public square.

Case in point: When Cameron’s publisher asked the Indianapolis Public Library about hosting a story hour with the author, a library employee replied that those types of events are “coordinated through our departments. We really have a push. We have a strategic plan in place, so we are really looking at authors who are diverse. Authors of color. That’s really been our focus.” And when the publisher countered that Cameron’s perspective contributes to a diversity of ideas, the library reportedly replied, “Well, we are focusing on racial equity.” In other words, the activists who staff government libraries work together to impose their cultural narratives and exclude those that are too white, too male, too straight, or too Christian.

At this point, the only way Cameron stands a chance of equal access to public libraries across the country is if he dresses up like a prostitute, gyrates around a reading room, and prods children to shove singles in his underwear.

The thing people like Cameron — or Jack Phillips or Barronelle Stutzman or Lorie Smith — understand but many establishment Republicans and “principled conservatives” don’t is that the left hates us and all the values we claim to be conserving. They don’t care about playing by a certain set of rules because their method is lawlessness (see: unpunished Black Lives Matter riots, brazen election meddling, illegal student loan bailouts, or unconstitutional vaccine mandates, to name a few). They scoff at viewpoint diversity because their aim is groupthink (consider: Big Tech suspensions for dissenters on a number of topics, or mass firings of health-care professionals who held unfavorable opinions about the jab). And they laugh at appeals to the First Amendment because they abandoned it long ago.

That’s why real conservatives groan when spineless Republican lawmakers drone about “robust” religious liberty protections in a tyrannical anti-speech bill promoting same-sex marriage. And it’s why they can’t bear to hear one more so-called conservative defend state-sponsored depravity with some appeal to “liberty.”

It should go without saying that conservatives should and do care more about the Constitution and other norms than their leftist counterparts, but there are indeed limits on the First Amendment. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

And the reality is that “The same First Amendment principle that allows drag queens to read to children in public libraries” is not “allow[ing] Christian groups to flourish,” as the Frenches of the world claim. It is not “permitting them to organize in universities and other public spaces.” After asking more than 50 libraries across the country to permit his Christian views, not a single one accommodated celebrity Kirk Cameron.

As my colleague John Daniel Davidson recently wrote in these pages, “[A]ccommodation or compromise with the left is impossible. One need only consider the speed with which the discourse shifted on gay marriage, from assuring conservatives ahead of the 2015 Obergefell decision that gay Americans were only asking for toleration, to the never-ending persecution of Jack Phillips. The left will only stop when conservatives stop them.”

Standing athwart history, yelling “stop” — or “viewpoint neutrality” or “free speech” — might have been enough to preserve liberty in the ’50s, but it’s almost 2023. If you want to know how well it’s working today, ask Kirk Cameron.

Buy Kirk Cameron’s book “As You Grow” here.

Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Watching Phones Instead of Reading Good Books Is Starving Kids’ Souls


BY: KATIE SCHUERMANN | OCTOBER 11, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/11/watching-phones-instead-of-reading-good-books-is-starving-kids-souls/

young man on his phone

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Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education 2022 conference. It is excerpted here with CCLE permission.

My husband pastors a campus church at a Big Ten university, and we live amongst college students. It is a blessed life, one in which our evenings are longer and our mornings shorter, all because we have the privilege of fostering 50-plus Gen Z-ers in the faith.

What passion and curiosity reside in the hearts and heads of our young people! But do you know what else resides there? Fear and distrust of most everything coming out of the mouth of anyone older than them.

For so many of these students grew up reading, hearing, watching, and absorbing stories that assert that they are omniscient, that no outside source is as trustworthy as their own feelings. They are certain they know what is best for themselves, and anyone who asserts otherwise is an indoctrinated false prophet of the dead past who simply refuses to sing along with Elsa, “Let it go.”

How did these young people come to trust their own corrupted gut more than the wisdom of their parents? I suspect it has something to do with Cinderella, Ariel, Elsa, and Anna; as well as Monica, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, and Chandler; and “Modern Family,” “Sex and the City,” “Parks and Recreation,” Marvel movies, and even “Veggie Tales,” for many of our present college students were raised in homes dominated by screens.

Much of their free time was spent absorbing serial television, and while not every televised program, movie, and YouTube channel necessarily tells false stories, much of modern programming follows a storytelling formula that ensures the pet social agendas of screenwriters are always being covered in the plot and in ways that narrate lies surrounding sexual identity, the sanctity of life, the good order of creation and marriage, the strength of men, and the reality of absolutes.

Stories have always been a part of how we pass down what is good and beautiful and true to our children, but depending on the storyteller, this practice can corrupt as easily as benefit. As more and more families turn over the care of their children to institutions, programs, clubs, teams, and devices, parents are no longer controlling the narrative of the stories being passed down to their children.

The loudest, most powerful propagandist holds the bullhorn, and he makes sure the story’s plot fits his personal agenda, no matter if it is evil and ugly and false. This proves especially dangerous in the classroom, where most children spend the greater part of everyday away from their parents.

We now have generations of children raised by bullhorns, and it is commonplace for a child to be occupied by some sort of program every moment of every day, whether it is a daycare program, school program, televised program, sports program, or an arts program — you name it. Many of today’s college students have had few opportunities in life to grow bored, to daydream, and to experience what happens to their bodies and minds and emotions when not occupied. They seem to have missed out on what used to be standard human experiences such as unregulated play, relating to peers of all shapes, sizes, and maturity levels, and making messy, wonderful, formative relationships with imperfect people.

I have observed that when young people are denied the opportunity to share experiences with other real people, they bond with the fake experiences and fake people they see on a screen instead. It is not uncommon for conversations amongst college students to be centered around Disney or “Game of Thrones” or the show “Friends” or countless other streamed programs. Sadly, those Hollywood-scripted shows are the memories peers share, and those designed-to-disorder plots are the common experiences with which they relate to each other.

So, what do we do about it? How do we reclaim the hearts and minds — the attention — of our children? We have to turn off the television, certainly, and power down our devices and pick out the books to be read before bedtime as well as model chastity and charity and temperance and kindness and patience in our own lives.

As Rod Dreher suggests in “The Benedict Option,” “Christians are going to have to become better tellers of our own story,” for the screenwriters are already pitching a relentless campaign for that position, programming our children into an understanding of humanity and of God that is false, an understanding that fools’ men, born free, into living as slaves to bullhorns.

Bo Giertz, the most celebrated storyteller in my own tradition of Lutheranism, writes: “People often think they are free when they put themselves above God’s commands and don’t do what He wants. Actually, they only stop serving one power and begin serving another. Jesus tells us there is only one way to find true freedom: to remain in His Word, listening, receiving, and understanding. Then we perceive truth, and the truth sets us free, truly free.” (“Wednesday after the Third Sunday in Lent,” To Live with Christ, Bo Giertz, 224.)

We need more of this truth that “sets us free” in the stories our children are consuming. We need to read and discuss books with them that teach toward virtue and away from vice, so our youth can recognize tyranny and slavery to sin when they see it.

And they need to know they are not alone. When the time of persecution inevitably comes — when their character and endurance are put to the ultimate test — it is helpful for them to know that they are in good company. They stand with Jesus and the Apostle Paul and Samwise Gamgee and Josip Lasta and Charles Wallace and Katniss and the Rev. John Ames and Robbie Jones and saints and angels and hundreds of years of fictional heroes who have been tested and tried and even triumphed.

Think of it this way. A child is born having no formative memories of virtues and vices. At least, we hope he doesn’t, for firsthand knowledge of tyranny and sloth and intemperance would suggest that the child has been abandoned or deceived by a parent or abused by an adult or has endured some unthinkable suffering.

But a child can still know that patience is a virtue, that joy accompanies charity, that self-sacrifice has its rewards, and that chastity is a beautiful, worthy aspiration, because he has heard the story of Joseph in Egypt and Isaac on the altar and Stephen in Jerusalem and Frodo in Mordor and Bigwig in “Watership Down” and Anne in Avonlea. These characters and stories — fiction or nonfiction — give children memories of virtues before they experience them themselves. These stories teach children into a thought pattern and into a mindset and behavior that is virtuous, that is free.

As Wendell Berry writes in his essay “A Native Hill”: “It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.” Our children need us to keep telling them good, true stories — especially the true story of their forefathers, both in the family and in the faith — so they can learn to be better than they are. For we have already seen that, if left to the world and its false stories, our children will learn to be worse than they are.

Katie Schuermann is a full-time homemaker, a part-time musician, and a seasonal writer. Find her books and more at katieschuermann.com.

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A Timely Poem for Dr. Seuss Day: ‘The List with a Fist’


POSTED BY: FATHER GOOSE | MARCH 02, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/02/a-poem-for-dr-seuss-day-the-list-with-a-fist/

List with a Fist by John Folley

Read Across America Day, also known as Dr. Seuss Day, is March 2. It celebrates both the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel and the importance of reading.

Dr. Seuss can not whine,
Though he was canceled this day,
By President Biden,
And the cold NEA.

Seuss sat there for decades,
His birthday they used,
To encourage kids’ reading,
To instruct and amuse.

Too racist is Seuss,
And too old, dead, and pale,
Too old for the times,
Too cruel and too male.

So all they could do was to
Nix!
     Nix!
         Nix!
             Nix!
And pull Seuss’s books.
Take him out of the mix.

But then,
The Booklist went WOKE!
And how that woke made us choke!

So we looked!
Then we saw the List scatter like glitter!
We looked!
And we saw it!
Like a book list from Twitter!

And it told us,
“Why do you read old books like Seuss?”

“I know they appeal
To every daughter and sonny.
But the joy found inside them
Is no longer funny!”

“I know some new books you can read,”
Said the List.
“I know some new tricks,”
Said the List with a Fist.
“A lot of good tricks.
I will show them to you.
Your parents
Won’t mind at all if I do.”

Then Americans
Did not know what to say.
Moms ‘n dads aren’t librarians
Who take Seuss books away.

But our conscience said, “Woah! Woah!
Make this list far less woke.
Tell the List with a Fist
We don’t want it to stoke
Any fire but love
Between family and friend.
The List is too woke.
It’s designed to offend.”

“Now! Now! Have no fear.
Have no fear!” said the list.
“My tricks are not bad,”
Said the List with a Fist.

“Why, we can have
Lots of good books, if you wish,
With a game that I call
Shut-up-the-conscience!”

“Put me down,” said our conscience,
“As one happy to see
You remove from your List
Ibram X. Kendi.”

“Have no fear!” said the list.
“I will offer much more.
I will offer X. Kendi,
And authors galore!
There’s a book about a Hawaiian girl,
Who sorely wished,
To be androgynous!”
Said the List…

“Look at this!
Look at this now!” said the list.
“Here’s a prince in a dress!
Prince Sebastian with a twist!
He’s Lady Crystallia,
Dressed in drag by night!
He hires a seamstress,
Who sees the light!

And look!
This book is Common Core aligned!
But all that is fine.
Oh, yes.
All that is fine….”

“Look at this!
Look at this!
Look at this NOW!
It is fun to read fun
But you have to know how.
I can hold up these books!
I can hold up another!
Here’s a Muslim sister and brother,
And the sister’s teen, lesbian lover.
They lie to the parents,
But then make them quite sad.
It’s erotic in places,
And old customs are bad.
It’s a confusing, grim tale,
For young teens it’s designed.
But that’s all fine.
Oh, yes.
That’s all fine.”

That is what the list said…
Then it slipped into kids’ heads!
The kids took it, they took it all.
And the American conscience,
It saw the kids fall!

And our conscience fell, too.
It fell into a think!
It said, “Do I like this?
Some of it stinks.
But some of it’s good,”
Said our conscience quite split.
“But I don’t like it,
Not one little bit!”

“Now look what you did!”
Said our conscience to the list.
“You mixed good with bad,
You List with a Fist.
You took things we love,
Like love among races,
Then mostly removed
Any trace of white faces.
You added to friendships,
Trans-sexy things,
When kids need some time
To grow free of such stings.”

“But I like to trans sex.
Oh I like it a lot!”
Said the List with a Fist
As the conscience it fought.
“I will not unmix my list.
I do not wish to change.
And so,” said the List with a Fist,
“So
      so
         so…
I will show you
Another good book that I know!”

And then it went on,
As clever as a fox,
And handed the conscience
An Amazon box.
A cardboard package.
It was clearly a book.
“Now look at this trick,”
Said the list.
“Take a look!”

Then the list shook the box,
With a wink of the eye:
“I call this game Two-in-One-Fun!”
Said the list.
“In this box is a child,
I will show you now:
He’s two things and one child!”
Said the list, with a bow.

“I will open the box.
You will see something new.
One child. And I call “him”
Thing One and Thing Two.
These Things will not bite you.
They want to have fun.”
Then out of the box,
Came Things Two, but Child One!
“See the child was a boy,
Who then dressed like a mermaid.
With lipstick and jewelry
He played and he played.

In his mind the poor boy
Grew out long flowing hair.
Then he dolled himself up
Till his nana just stared.”
But our conscience said, “Woah!
Those things should not be
In this list. Make them go!
They should not be here
When the logic is wrong.
One boy. Two Things?”
Our conscience stayed strong.

“Have no fear, little conscience,”
Said the List with a Fist.
“These Things are good Things,”
With a wink said the list.
“They are good. Oh, so good!
They have come here to free
Every child from the sorrow
Of having to be.”

“Now here is the freedom they like,”
Said the list.
“They like to make lists!”
Said the List with a Fist.

“No, not another list!”
Said the conscience dismayed.
“They should not make a list
With the gender “mermaid”!
Nor Trans Man, nor Two-Spirit,
Pangender, nor Fluid,
Not Transmasculine, Intersex,
Nor Cisgendered Druid!”

The American conscience
Saw new lists unfurl.
With one child called two Things:
Both girl and demigirl.
“Fists! Lists!” cried the List with a Fist,
“Two is one; fun is fun!”

Things Two and Child One!?
It’s unhappy and sad!
It’ll string out one kid.
It’s a dangerous fad.
Encouraging boys
To wear mother’s gown
Will end with far worse
Than a lip-sticky frown.

Things Two in Child One
Will tear him to bits,
Pull his heart this way
And that till it splits!
And America said,
“I do NOT like the way the list plays!
Mother Nature can see that
One child has one way!”

Then our conscience said, “Look! Look!”
And our conscience shook its own fist.
“Mother Nature is coming!
And she has no such list.
Through the flowers she’s humming,
And she’s something to say.
Oh, she will not like it
To find kids this way!”

“So, DO something! Fast!” said the conscience.
“Do you hear!
I saw her. Your mother!
Mother Nature is near!
So, as fast as you can,
Think of something to do!
You will have to get rid of
‘Child One is Things Two’!”

So, as fast as we can,
We’ll get on to the net.
And we’ll say, “On the net
We can help kids, we bet.
We bet, with the net,
We can set things right yet!

“Or better, get kids to set down the net!
Set it down with a PLOP!
And avoid hurtful lists
So the Two Things will stop.”
Said the conscience aloud.
And then with clenched fists,
The Americans said,
“Be gone, mixed up list!”

“Oh dear!” said the list.
“You did not like our game…
Oh dear.
  What a shame!
             What a shame!
                   What a shame!”

Then the list took Two Things
From its list full of books.
And the list went away
With a sad kind of look.

“That is good,” said the conscience.
“The list’s gone away. Yes.
But Mother Nature will come.
She will find a big mess!
And this mess is so big
And so deep and so tall,
But we must pick it up,
Or the country will fall!”

And THEN!
Who was back in the house?
Why, Mother Nature, of course!
“Have no fear of this mess,”
Said the Nature of Things.
“I always heal the list’s nasty stings.

And so…
I will show you a different
Good trick that I know!”

Then we saw her pick up
All the kids that were down.
She called to the merboy:
“Dear, put down that gown,
And the silk, and the necklace,
And the lipstick, and heels.
Use your head and a mirror,
Not your murkier feels.”
And she stood them up fresh,
And free and true.
And she said to each one,
“You know God loves you!”

Then Mother Nature gave way
And a voice from above
Gave a choice to our conscience,
The choice of Love.

And the American conscience,
Now knows what’s at stake:
  “Love what you are,
  Or you’ll love what is fake.”

Should we tell kids about this?
Now, what SHOULD we do?
Well…
What would YOU do
If the list with a fist came for you?

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Education, Family, Political

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Meet The Sex Shop Founder Who Is Grooming Children Through Books In School Libraries


REPORTED BY: SPENCER LINDQUIST | INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM | FEBRUARY 16, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/16/meet-the-sex-shop-founder-who-is-grooming-children-through-books-in-school-libraries/

This article features obscene quoted material.

As parents across the nation wake up to the threat that the American educational system poses to children, many have taken note of the sexually explicit, politically motivated literature that has made its way into public and school libraries. 

In Wyoming, community members notified the police department about explicit books in the local library’s youth section. “Sex is a Funny Word,” written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth, is one such book. It was placed on the American Library Association Reading List for 2016. Intended for those as young as 7-year-old second graders, the book has been featured in middle school libraries and discusses the “subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation.” It also erroneously claims that “having a penis isn’t what makes you a boy. Having a vulva isn’t what makes you a girl. The truth is much more interesting than that!” 

This type of propagandizing has become standard for the left-wing extremists embedded in our education system. But what makes it all the more astonishing is both the thoroughly unnerving — and previously unreported — history of this book’s author and the institutional support that’s propelled him to notoriety. 

From Sex Shops To School Libraries

Cory Silverberg’s website links to the four books he’s written. Each one focuses on the same thing: sex. With the exception of “The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability,” which he coauthored with Miriam Kaufman and Fran Odette, the author’s work is aimed at children. His latest book, “You Know, Sex,” another collaboration with Smyth, is available for pre-order and discusses “pornography,” “stigma,” and “gender.” He calls the book “essential for kids.” His website bio states, “Cory’s life is full of kids. All of them know where babies come from. Some know more.”

Who is this man so intent on informing your children not only about sex, but about pornography, transsexuality, and masturbation? On his website, which advertises children’s books, the author cites himself as a “founding member of Come As You Are Co-operative,” an anti-capitalist sex shop in Toronto, which he also links to. 

As the Toronto Star noted years ago, this isn’t just any sex shop. This is a “beginner’s sex store.” The outlet noted that the store hoped “to hold an off-site sex-education workshop for parents of children aged 7 to 12, one that will focus on more than reproduction.” The Star went on to quote Silverberg as saying, “Our overall focus is pleasure-based rather than fear-based.”

The shop’s website includes a section that catalogs the owners’ media appearances. One edition of Fab magazine, published on February 7, 2007, includes an article titled “Come As You Are Celebrates 10 Years.” It spares no details, highlighting a “Japanese rope bondage” workshop, while also graphically describing a real life, in-person “workshop” that featured sexual demonstrations from two naked men.

The disturbing focus on children that is so clear on Silverberg’s personal website is just as apparent on the sex shop’s website. Right next to ads for the exact type of products you’d expect a sex shop to sell, is a “Kids, Parents, and Teens Books” section. The section boasts “sex positive guides for younger folk.”

The kid’s section carries books like “Gender Creative Child,” a guide to masturbation, and “Woke Parenting,” which seeks to help readers “raise your kids to be feminist, anti-racist,” and “gender-inclusive.” Silverberg’s own books are also featured on the site.

Involvement In Curriculum Development

The author’s involvement in Ante Up reveals a conscious desire to embed his distorted worldview into schools. The organization advertises “socio-emotional learning” curriculum that “focuses on supporting educators of color and working-class educators in unlearning the white supremacist ableist heteropatriarchal ways of writing and educating others.” 

The sex shop co-founder is joined by such esteemeed co-collaborators as Clarissa Francis, who cut squarely into the Babyon Bee’s marketshare when her bio explained that she “developed the Let Freedom C.U.M. Sexuality Workshop Series to equip Black sexuality professionals, and the aspiring sexually liberated, to recognize and utilize multi-disciplinary approaches to discussing Pleasure Activism as a tool for Black Sexual Liberation.” 

The organization seems to have courted favor with various political bodies in New York. Ante Up’s founder Bianca Laureano “wrote the sexual and reproductive justice discussion guide for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,” according to her bio. Silverberg spoke on “Sex Is a Funny Word” for the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Learning.

Institutional Support of Extremism

It isn’t a fluke that a leftwing sex shop founder has been propped up as an authority on sexuality, with direct access to children. Media and education institutions, alongside several leftwing activists, have helped mainstream such fringe beliefs. The author is praised because of, not in spite of, the extremism of his sexual worldview. 

That “Sex is a Funny Word” was lauded by Kristin Russo on behalf of BuzzFeed as “revolutionary” tells you everything you need to know, but the outlet was one of many institutions to lend its support.

The book won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award and was celebrated by the School Library Journal, which called the book “exceptional” specifically because of “its introduction of the subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation.” The organization publishes roughly 6,000 book reviews every year and bills itself as “the premiere publication for librarians and information specialists who work with children and teens.” 

Lambda Literary, which “nurtures and advocates for LGBTQ writers,” heaped praise on the book, noting that it took “his radical approach to sex education” featured in his first book even further. It goes on to discuss the role that the book can have in cementing cultural shifts. During an interview with the organization, the author pointed out that some of his critics believe that he is “warping people’s ideas of gender.” He flatly responded, “Maybe I am.”

Various activists, each of whom is committed to overthrowing healthy conceptions of sex, lauded the book alongside these institutions in reviews posted on Amazon. 

Andee Hochman is an accomplished leftwing activist who wrote a book all about upending traditional notions of family. It was named “one of the 100 most important feminist books of the 20th century by Sojourner magazine.” Hochman celebrated “Sex Is a Funny Word’s” “radical and urgent message – sexuality with a side of social justice,” also expressing glee that one of the children in the book was portrayed as non-binary. Her lone critique? The text was too small. 

Transgender activist and author of “My New Gender Workbook” Kate Bornstein was similarly impressed, writing a review that proposed the book as a viable alternative to college, graduate school, and even “years of therapy.” This is high praise, especially from an activist who wrote the “Step by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity.”

Aidan Key, who leads trainings in schools, remarked that the book enables readers to “step out of today’s binary gender paradigm,” while Slate’s Rachelle Hampton lauded the book because it “humorously tackles topics from gender to masturbation” and was “leaps and bounds ahead” of other books “in terms of how progressive it is.”

But Huffington Post outdid both Slate and BuzzFeed years ago when they offered the author a platform and even hosted a symposium on reshaping America’s sexual norms with him and more established leftwing activists. The author’s extreme views were given the patina of normalcy through the presence of more mainstream activists like notable author Esther Perel and the widely published Ian Kerner, who talk less of childhood masturbation and more of feminism and relationships. They were also joined by academic Leonore Tiefer, who was involved in the leadership of an organization intent on keeping perversity like “Sex is a Funny Word” in school libraries. Tiefer won an award named after Alfred Kinsey, a hero of the pro-pedophile group NAMBLA.

What’s so telling isn’t the book itself, but that the beliefs behind it, undoubtedly considered reprehensible by massive swaths of the world, have been intentionally mainstreamed by both an activist base and an institutionally backed political movement that’s hostile to traditional notions of decency. No wonder parents are getting active.

Cory Silverberg did not respond to a request for comment.

Spencer Lindquist is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at Pepperdine University where he studies Political Science and Rhetoric and Leadership and serves as Pepperdine’s College Republicans President. You can follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach him at LSpencerLindquist@gmail.com.

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Education, Family, Political

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Forthcoming Law In California Could Ban The Sale of Bibles In The State


Reported by Ahle

URL of the original posting site: https://steadfastandloyal.com/politics/forthcoming-law-in-california-could-ban-the-sale-of-bibles-in-the-state/

It could only happen in California but they are considering a law to make any book or reading material that advocates for traditional marriage and sexuality. That would include the Bible. 

So what’s going on in California follows a familiar pattern? Indoctrinating children, using violence to shut down your opponents and to intimidate them and now they’re ready to burn books. That’s exactly what Hitler did in the 1930s and anyone who is surprised by what is going on in California just hasn’t been paying attention.

Well, somebody better start paying attention and soon.

But what if someone decided for themselves that they want to change? A priest or a pastor could face legal consequences if they were to help them. In a normal state that wouldn’t be a worry but this is California and if you believe they wouldn’t face charges, you are sadly mistaken.

They will never miss a chance to bash God and religion.

From The Conservative Tribune

Shockingly, the proposed law could even be construed to make it illegal to sell Bibles, since they include verses that the far left finds unacceptable.

“Assembly Bill 2943 would make it an ‘unlawful business practice’ to engage in ‘a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer’ that advertise, offer to engage in, or do engage in ‘sexual orientation change efforts with an individual,’” explained National Review. 

That’s a lot of legalese to digest, so let’s break it down. What the bill basically says is that anything that can be seen as trying to impact a person’s sexual orientation would be illegal to sell or offer.

“The bill then defines ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ as ‘any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex,” continued National Review (emphasis added).

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