Book banning? The difference in a nutshell and why the left will lose on this issue too...

Liberals seem to want to bring up the subject of banning books even though it's another political loser

Let's start with the simple fact that book banning has been going on now for some times. Let's also accept the fact that both liberals and conservatives are looking to ban books and that both liberal and conservatives "have" banned books. But let's also be honest in our assessment of which liberals and which conservatives are the ones looking to ban book, because that makes a significant difference.

As everyone should know now, several prominent books have been banned, some are being taken off the required reading lists, and others are being shunned by politicians, school boards, and even teachers at the classroom levels. Most of these books (such as "To Kill a Mockingbird") are being removed either from circulation or from a reading list because of supposed racial insensitivity. Other history books and such that are deems to be racially insensitive are also being banned or in many cases no longer used by the teachers in charge. Liberal (whether they admit it or not) are attempting to censor certain general concepts that liberals are uncomfortable with. 

But more recently we have also been hearing about books being banned from schools, or classrooms, or taken off reading lists by so called conservative parents. Some States are passing laws that are providing parents with more say-so as to what is an isn't being taught in the schools. The sorts of books being cast out by these parents are generally books that they feel are too sexually explicit, especially as it pertains to gay sex, sexual fetishes, and more graphic sexual encounters. The argument generally being that we can teach about homosexuality without introducing grade schoolers to pictures or illustrations of the acts being performed.

Now I am not making an argument as to which type of ban is more or less acceptable. I think that will fall to individuals to decide if a racially insensitive book or a sexually explicit book is better or worse suited to be used in a classroom or even available in a library. As a boomer in my 50's we did not have the same issues as we do today with racial insensitivity. Not that people were racially sensitive, it was that there was no clamoring by anyone to ban Huckleberry Finn because of some perceive racial issue. On the flip side I know very well that the only sexually explicit materials in any library in any school I attended would have been diagrams in medical or sexual health books. There would have not been any books that I could open up and see pictures of oral or anal sex being performed. 

So it seems odd to me that books we grew up with are being cast aside and not read by children, but they can go into the library and look at pictures of two men having sex. Call me old fashioned, call me a prude, but I think there is a better way to go about teaching children that homosexuality is normal, healthy, and perfectly acceptable in today's society than providing sexually explicit books. But that is just me.

So why do I think this is another loser for the left? Well because the books liberals are banning or removing from reading lists are being chosen by teachers, administrators, and ultimately politicians. The books being banned or removed by conservatives are being removed by the parents themselves. I believe that the important part here is not "what" is being banned, but who is doing the banning. 

Liberals are not going to have much success telling suburban parents that "they" get to decide what books are and are not appropriate based on their own politics, but that parents themselves have no right to have a similar say in what books their own children are exposed to. It is really the same argument that played out in Virgina on student mask mandates and critical race theory.  

Parents want a say and arguing that they should not have one is simply bad politics.