The weirdo hypocrites behind the book bans. By Don Moynihan

donmoynihan.substack.com

10 - 12 minutes

Don Moynihan

11 Dec 2023

This is the story - well three stories really - of the people who are banning books in classrooms across America.

But first, a personal question: Do you find the image below so arousing that it will trigger a crippling porn addiction?

If you said “yes, this is obvious gateway material to hard core pornography,” congratulations, the book banners of America are recruiting. As reported by Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby in Popular Information, and Frank Strong in Anger & Clarity, a 20 year old woman testified the following to Conroe Independent School District in Texas:

    My story started when I was 11 and was introduced to a single kiss in a Scholastic book. I did not understand why I liked it. This was the start of my porn addiction journey…I don’t want Conroe ISD students to repeat what I went through because they accidentally ran upon a Scholastic book or another book that could lead them down this road, which Drama is one of them. This isn’t about banning books. Its about sexual obscenity…Getting rid of Scholastic books and their book fairs will inevitably protect kids, but its your decision. What do you want to do?

Well, that escalated quickly!

The offending book, Drama, holds nothing more that a couple of cartoon kisses of the kind shown above. (It also features gay characters, which seems to be why it was under debate at the meeting in the first place). If such an image fueled an unquenchable lust for porn, what if the unfortunate youngster had come across a television, or billboard, or an issue of People magazine? Or, heavens help us, the internet itself.

The young lady urged the school board to ban not just Drama, but also to remove books from the publisher, Scholastic books, and from hosting Scholastic book fairs.

She also left out some pertinent information.

For one thing, she appears to have been home schooled. So she did not actually view the offending image at school.

Another pertinent fact: she works for a rival publisher of kids books. While Scholastic is a juggernaut, she works at the nexus of two smaller publishers who are seeking to displace Scholastic by presenting themselves as the conservative alternative. Their books are thinly veiled critiques of gender identity and promotions of gun owners authored by conservative celebrities, like Kirk Cameron,1 LibsOf TikTok Chaya Raichik, Pizzagater Jack Posobiec, QAnoner Mike Flynn, or Dana Loesch, a former NRA spokesperson. The publishers and associated authors boosted her story.

As soon as the story of porn addiction was relayed to the school board, other representatives of the rival book companies pitched their wares in even less subtle ways: “Scholastic’s gone woke, and many of their stories are now of characters with mental health disorders, LGBTQ characters, and characters undergoing sex change operations. It’s not a surprise, then, that our children have mirrored the characters in the books that they’re reading” said the CEO of Brave Books. Supporters on the School Board urged that the vendors be considered for book contracts. Meanwhile, Drama was restricted to older kids.

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My kids go to Montgomery Count Schools in Maryland, far from Texas, a place where parents oppose book bans.

But not all parents. Take Bethany Mandel. She is upset about the school district allowing materials that feature gender identity as a theme.

Here is what happened: a June 2023 board meeting on books in libraries had a large anticipated crowd. The meeting addressed whether parents could opt out of the use of books related to gender identity in the classroom. Not everyone could be included, and like many others, Mandel was unable to enter the room. (The event was livestreamed). Mandel and another Montgomery County resident, Matthew Foldi, are now suing the school district, claiming their first amendment rights have been violated. They are being represented by America First Legal.

America First Legal is the creation of America's favorite white nationalist, Stephen Miller.

You will note the careful presentation by American First Legal of Mandel as a parent. This is no coincidence. In Mandel’s world, parents and parental rights occupy an elevated station.

There is one problem, however. No, its not the fact that a champion of parents is being represented by someone best known for an immigration policy separating kids from their parents.

Mandel does not have any kids in the school district.

She is loudly and proudly not a school parent. She homeschools her kids.

Her fellow plaintiff, Matthew Foldi, is also a Montgomery County resident, but does not appear to have kids. He is a Republican Congressional candidate, and a writer for right wing outlets like The Spectator and The Free Beacon.

In short, neither of these people have kids in Montgomery Schools, but do have a professional career as right wing activists. It was in this capacity that they attended the school district meeting. Indeed, Foldi presented himself as a reporter and tried to access the meeting that way.

Two individuals with large national platforms argue that their efforts to ban books was stymied in a way that violated their free speech rights.

Miller’s legal group was unable to get an actual parent with kids in the school district. If they had, the nub of the argument is less around free speech, and more around the desire to restrict the use of books. Indeed, the district is already being sued on those grounds (Mahmoud vs. McKnight).

Mandel is also suing six district teachers who ran a LGBTQ-supportive twitter account for blocking her, seeking financial damages. This is an account with less than 600 followers. Mandel has 128K followers. At least on one occasion she quote-tweeted them to her followers.

At some point they blocked her. (Note that her legal claim says that Mandel was blocked before June 27, 2023, in retaliation for her views critical of MCPS, but here is she is quote-tweeting them two days after that).

I’m sure there are some parents with actual kids in schools who object to this material. But not many. When I was a kid, we simply did not explore gender or identity in school. My 10-year old now has both a deeper knowledge and greater empathy on this topic than I did until relatively late in life. She hasn’t been brainwashed. She has been educated. I’m glad for that.

American parents generally do not understand the unusual degree of influence they hold over the governance of schools, including direct democratic control over curriculum issues. This is why you will get blank stares from people in other countries if you ask them how contentious school board elections are. Americans also have extraordinary choice in schooling when it comes to vouchers and home schooling. If Mandel wants to home school her kids, good luck to her. I just wish she would stop harassing my kid’s teachers and trying to decide what my kid reads at school.

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The third story involves a Florida political power couple Bridget and Christian Ziegler. Christian is the chair of the Florida Republican Party, and his wife Bridget is a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, the group that has pushed for book bans across America, in the name of, uh, liberty. Bridget Ziegler also helped to co-author the Don’t Say Gay law signed by Ron DeSantis that restricts discussion of gender identity in schools. (You can see Ziegler below at the signing of the bill. She is just to the right of the tall guy, Joe Harding, the primary author of the bill, who is now in prison for fraud).

As a columnist in the Miami Herald put it, “Parents and gay children have suffered immeasurably from the fires the Zieglers and their followers stoked pushing the lie that children were being groomed in Florida schools to be gay and trans.”

Christian Ziegler is now accused of rape. The accusations also revealed that the couple had a prior three-way sexual encounter with the alleged victim, even as they centered their political ascent around traditional family values. More specifically, they had no problem in engaging in a same-sex encounter at the time they demonizing anything other than heterosexual identity. While the charges of hypocrisy have taken on an almost gleeful tone, inappropriate given the gravity of the accusations of rape, we would not have found out about one but for the other.

As the book bans started to gain momentum over the last few years, a few patterns emerged. These were often driven by a mixture of zealots and well-funded political organizations. Their purpose was less about education and more about attacking and controlling public schools and libraries. The effect was to replace professional judgement with activist veto power, rarely targeting texts that were sexual, and most frequently banning books related to either racial or gender identity. They have expanded beyond schools, and are now targeting public libraries, restricting what adults can read.

What else can we discern from the three stories?

First, and most obviously, is the hypocrisy of the book banners. Some of this involves lying about the books themselves and the purpose of the book bans. Others involve misrepresenting their own identity. In other cases, personal conduct is inconsistent with the policy choices they seek to impose on the rest of us.

Second, the cases show how individual motives inform the efforts to ban books. No doubt some are sincerely fearful of books, and unwilling to be reassured by educational professionals. But others are using the issue build a business, or a media or political profile. We have reached the stage where book banning is a sustainable enough political movement in America that it has its own political economy. Publishers trying to break into the book world see it as a strategy to clear out the competition. Political activists are using it for clout and influence.

Third, and finally: a lot of these folks, the loudest ones grabbing national attention and political resources, are weirdos. They engage in political stunts, lie, or demonstrate spectacularly bad judgment. These are not people you would trust to keep an eye on your kids for an afternoon, much less determine their education. But they are motivated, and repairing our institutions means opposing them with a similar degree of energy and organization.