Why did the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, put porn on its recommended-reading list?
The NEA presumably listed Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir” in its “Great Summer Reads for Educators” under “banned” books because Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, correctly, got it out of his state’s school libraries.
The book is aimed at teens but was found in several elementary schools.
It contains truly shocking, explicit descriptions and drawings of sexual acts.
The NEA pretends the book’s LGBT characters got it removed from school libraries, writing on its website: “Twilight used to be at the top of banned-book lists for its racy content. Today, those lists are much more likely to feature LGBTQ+ people or People of Color.”
This is true only because organizations like the NEA are using books with LGBT characters to put inappropriate sexual material in front of children.
“Twilight” had some kissing.
“Gender Queer” has oral sex.
It’s not at all the same.
More than ever, the teachers unions are on the opposite side of moms and dads.
What parent wants his or her kid to stumble onto a book about dildos and sexting, both concepts included in “Gender Queer,” at school?
In fact, when DeSantis wanted to show the images from the books he was pulling from school libraries, local news outlets had to cut out of his press conference because the pictures were so graphic.
Yet the NEA wants this book in your kid’s school.
Left’s hollow defense
The defense from the left seems to be that there’s no point in barring these books from a school library when a child can access far worse material on a phone or home computer.
By this theory, parents should have been buying teenage boys copies of Playboy to read behind the Piggly Wiggly — otherwise parents were committing censorship.
Just because kids, unfortunately, have access to inappropriate material doesn’t mean their school should supply it and their teachers encourage it.
NEA’s inclusion of the book on its list is meant to do just that.
In addition to being inappropriate and gross, “Gender Queer” is of poor literary quality.
Out of all the books in the world, classics as well as books written recently, it simply doesn’t rank as literature our kids need to read.
Our country has seen a sharp decline in reading scores, at many grade levels, in the last year.
An unexplored reason might be that schools are supplying nonsense books like “Gender Queer” and kids never learn to read and comprehend actual literary works.
But the NEA doesn’t care about your kid reading. It cares about activism, not education.
Another book on its “banned” list is “Ready Player One,” which, again, was not banned but taken out of Florida middle schools for profanity and plot lines including a sex robot.
School libraries can’t contain every book in the world. Why should they contain this one?
Best they have to offer?
Another book on the list, presumably not banned, is “Milo and Marcos at the End of the World” by Kevin Christopher Snipes.
In it, a boy is convinced God is punishing him for being gay. Religious people are weird and awkward. The book is also poorly written. So perfect for NEA teachers to read over the summer!
Also listed is Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” a book used to scam pathetic white liberals into paying for white DiAngelo’s pricey seminars to make sure they parrot the correct language on racism.
The NEA has an agenda and that agenda is far-left and child-last.
The union displayed it during the pandemic, by ensuring schools stayed closed even if that meant the poorest kids in the country would be hardest hit.
Now it’s moved on to fighting a culture war that is specifically a war against families.
It’s not interested in educating children, only indoctrinating them.
The NEA isn’t trying to hide its goal.
Parents just need to believe the union. And stop it.
Karol Markowicz is co-author of the new book “Stolen Youth.”
