President Joe Biden has sicced the U.S. Education Department on state and local school officials who want to keep pornographic materials away from students.
Through its Office for Civil Rights, Biden’s Department of Education is set to name a new coordinator who will “address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students,” the White House said in a statement last week, according to Fox News.
According to White House, domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden will train local school officials on how efforts to remove questionable books or materials from school libraries “may violate federal civil rights laws if they create a hostile work environment, hostile environment for students.”
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“This move by the Biden administration is a counter to parents and activists who have complained about sexually explicit and graphic LGBTQI+ content in school and public libraries and sought to remove those materials,” Fox News noted.
“Book banning erodes our democracy, removes vital resources for student learning and can contribute to stigma and isolation that many communities face,” Tanden said.
Despite claims of left-wing groups like PEN America or the American Library Association, no books have been “banned” anywhere. Parents are free to purchase the books for their children to read at home.
Conservative parents and activists have complained about taxpayers’ resources being used to purchase and furnish these books to schools, often where they can be accessed by children in the youngest grades.
The book “Gender Queer” is the most challenged book in the country because of its cartoon depictions of a girl masturbating and performing oral sex.
In some locales, school boards have prohibited parents from reading books found in their own libraries because the material was too sexually explicit.
Florida, under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been at the forefront of this effort.
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Last year, DeSantis enacted the Parental Rights in Education law, which blocked school districts and classroom teachers from introducing lesson plans rooted in gender ideology or sexual orientation in grades K-3.
Meanwhile, another new state law requires a “certified media specialist” to review books for sexually explicit and racist content before allowing students access to them.
“Exposing the ‘book ban’ hoax is important, because it reveals that some are attempting to use our schools for indoctrination,” DeSantis said back in March in defending the policies.
“In Florida, pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards. Florida is the education state, and that means providing students with a quality education free from sexualization and harmful materials that are not age-appropriate.”
In contrast, American Library Association President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada praised Biden’s efforts to keep sexually explicit and left-wing gender ideology content in school classrooms and libraries.
“We are heartened by the Biden-Harris Administration’s leadership to address the alarming rise in book bans and other attacks on LGBTQIA+ Americans that aim to stigmatize and erase the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community,” Pelayo-Lozada said, according to Fox News.
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