Texas Law to Prohibit Obscene Material in Public Schools
How badly do leftists want to get porn into public schools? How badly do they want to mainline leftist ideas about sexuality and “gender” into the hearts and minds of other people’s children? Really badly. Just look at what leftist propagandists, ideologues, groomers, and profiteers are doing in Texas.
In late June, HB 900 was passed by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott that will require the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to establish standards and collection development policies that will prohibit the “possession, acquisition or purchase” of “sexually explicit material” as defined by two sections of the Penal Code. The “Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act” (Reader Act), scheduled to take effect Sept. 1, 2023, is a commonsense law intended to stop leftists from exposing minor children to obscene material using public money.
Further, any vendors that sell material to public schools must provide ratings for that material based on several factors:
the explicitness or graphic nature of a description or depiction of sexual conduct
whether the material consists predominantly of or contains multiple repetitions of sexual or excretory organs or activities
whether a reasonable person would find that the material intentionally panders to, titillates, or shocks the reader
While many parents and other taxpayers find such expectations reasonable, leftists are so apoplectic about this law that a coalition of book sellers, publishers and authors are suing to stop the law’s implementation. The plaintiffs claim that the law—which they have renamed the “Book Ban”—may lead to the banning of “Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Ulysses, Jane Eyre, and the Bible.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket, they’re worried that Jane Eyre may be banned. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
They also fret that in cases where there is a dispute over the vendor’s rating, the law grants ultimate authority to the state to determine whether a resource violates the law. The plaintiffs—unelected leftists who profit handsomely from selling their unseemly wares to schools—want to retain absolute autonomy in determining whether material is appropriate.
It’s unfortunate that such a law was necessary, but leftists have arrogated to themselves near absolute autonomy in the selection and non-selection—that is, de facto book-banning—of resources. And with regard to sexuality and “gender,” leftists have demonstrated they have no boundaries.
Well, that’s not quite accurate. They do have boundaries. Any material that affirms, espouses, promotes, or positively depicts heteronormativity falls outside those boundaries and will not be published, acquired, purchased, or taught. In other words, “gender critical” resources or any conservative resources on sexuality are banned.
Leftists are masters of idea-, word-, and book- banning and equally practiced at the art of deception. They conceal their book-banning by calling it anti- book-banning. Kinda like espousing racist Critical Race Theory and calling it “anti-racism.”
What negative consequences do leftists think would result if minors were exposed to no resources in middle or high school English classes that portray, depict, or discuss graphic sex acts or cross-sex impersonation? Would students be less able to think rationally? Would they be untrained in how to construct an effective thesis statement? Would they have less facility with the use of evidence? Would their chances of being admitted to college be hampered?
It seems unlikely that any of those negative consequences would result from the absence of resources with obscene content—content that cannot be published in newspapers or be read on network news. So, why are leftists so fanatically invested in exposing other people’s children to graphic depictions of erotic acts and gender confusion?
Here’s why: the long destructive march through the institutions begun in the Frankfort School in Germany in the early 20th Century and imported to America by Herbert Marcuse depends on destroying the family via a sexual revolution and the transformation of children into useful idiots for the pseudo-religious cause that has come to be called “cultural Marxism.”
Parents and laws like the READER Act passed through elected and accountable representatives are obstacles to the leftist revolution. Leftists fear losing their church.