hotair.com
2023-08-16
Parents and activists fighting the invasion of pornography into schools face a big problem: they run up against the usually-good American impulse to reject attempts to censor books.
Americans rightly have a kneejerk reaction against suppressing ideas (although, ironically, the same people pushing pornography in the schools are also pushing for censorship of ideas they don't like!), and without direct evidence that something truly unacceptable is being provided to children, they are inclined to side with those who are more permissive when it comes to speech.
Generically we approve of free speech, and yet we all have edge cases where we understand that some things are inappropriate to be widely distributed. That is why the Supreme Court has carved out "obscene" speech exceptions, and things like child pornography are completely banned.
The pornography in schools debate isn't even about censorship of books, but rather the curation policies of schools which of necessity pick and choose which books to purchase and distribute to children. And, as far as I know, nobody is trying to ban pornographic books aimed at children, but simply exclude sexually explicit books from the curated lists that schools recommend and provide to students as part of their education.