DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – All over the country, the transgender movement has gotten supporters in their corner who are allowing what has been described as “pornography” in public school libraries and taxpayer funded community libraries. As a result of their efforts to be inclusive and support gender equality, these books have been popping up in libraries and being made available to children of all ages.

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In order to push back against the removal of these books and protect their availability to children, the media, Democrats and supporters of the transgender movement are calling these efforts by parents to protect their children “book banning.” Headlines from media outlets all over the country, including Michigan, are shouting titles like Detroit Free Press’ “Book bans spreading across Michigan” and WXYZ Detroit’s “Michigan among top states in the U.S. with most book bans in schools, report finds.”

In Michigan, just like in the rest of the country, there is one book causing more consternation among parents than the others. It’s a book titled “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” Written by cartoonist and nonbinary author Maia Kobabe, it contains cartoon-style pornographic images that depict minors engaging in sex acts.

According to PEN America, an organization protecting free expression in literature, Gender Queer was the most banned book in school libraries in 2022. The same group did a study that found between July 2021 and June 2022, there were more than 1,600 books banned in more than 5,000 schools across 32 states. They listed Michigan as having 26-50 bans during this time period.

Back in 2021, two prominent national school library organizations promoted the Gender Queer book, the School Library Journal and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) who gave the book an “Alex” award for books that have a “special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.

Just like with many others who want to control the language and narrative of the issue, “banning” is the preferred term used by PEN America who advocates for the protection of access to sexually explicit and pedophilia-themed books for children under the guise of the first amendment.

Their article titled “Banned in the USA: Rising school book bans threaten free expression and students’ first amendment rights” highlights what is taking place as the “disproportionate targeting of books by or about people whose identities and stories have traditionally been underrepresented in children’s and young adult literature, such as people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, or persons with disabilities.”

The Gender Queer book created an uproar in Ottawa County in the fall of 2022 when voters defunded the Patmos Library because they offered the book as well as other LGBTQ-themed books that parents did not consider appropriate. Angry parents have showed up at school board meetings all over the country protesting these sexually explicit books including in Dearborn, Michigan.

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In Dearborn, mother Stephanie Butler told the school board, “I believe that pornography and rape culture have no place in our schools. Schools should be protecting our children, not grooming them for a life of trauma, hypersexuality and moral decay. … I am not a crusader against books that depict diverse life, ethnicities or ideas, but I sure as hell am against smut being presented to our kids as appropriate reading material.”

Because school officials have ignored the wishes of the parents to remove the books they deem inappropriate for their children, the parents, and even some students, have taken to reading the contents of the books out loud at the school board meetings. In September of 2021, a Fairfax County, Virginia mother, Stacy Langton, went to a school board meeting to reveal the porn and pedophilia in the school’s library books. She read from the books Gender Queer and Lawn Boy. She told the board, the parents in the audience and those watching from home, “Both of these books include pedophilia, sex between men and boys. One book included a fourth grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male.” Those who were in the audience and didn’t know what was in the books were shocked.

Langton started reading the pages from the book and showed illustrations. And even though these books were being allowed to be checked out by children, the camera in the room panned away from the books, ironically censoring them from the view and the board warned the mother “there are children in the audience.” The board also consistently interrupted the mother, which is against the policy of the school.

In another Texas school, mother Kara Bell read passages of inappropriate books in her children’s school to the board and they cut her mic off.

In Maine, an 11-year-old boy was at a school board meeting and read passages from “Nick and Charley,” a book that he was able to check out at his school’s library. He read the sexually explicit material in front of the board and said that the librarian had asked if he wanted the graphic novel version.

Parents aren’t the only ones who are taking notice of these books in libraries across the country. Legislators are paying attention too. In Kentucky, according to the Lexington Herald Leader, a Senate bill “requiring Kentucky’s boards of education to adopt a complaint resolution policy for parents who allege that materials taught in school are harmful to minors is moving forward, with a Fayette County Public School employee expressing support.”

In Michigan, Republican State Representative Neil Friske (R-Charlevoix) introduced a bill that would require libraries to move books with “obscene” or “sexually explicit” content to a special restricted adults-only section only accessible to adults 18-years-old and older – and allow anyone to report a book they think is unsuitable for minors.

Friske said about the bill, “My office has received an outpouring of calls from constituents who are angered at the content found in the children’s sections of their local libraries. This is a genuine concern for folks in my district, and my bill aims to keep children across the state safe.”

He continued, “This bill does not ban libraries from having specific books or genres of books, nor does it discriminate against any individuals. The bill simply places content containing things like pornographic images to an area of the library reserved specifically for adults. This is common sense legislation. It is crucial that the children of Michigan be protected everywhere they go – obscenity in front of minors is traumatic and should never be permitted.”

Also in Michigan, there is pushback against libraries offering inappropriate books to children in one county in Michigan. According to Bridge Michigan, Lapeer County Prosecutor John Miller is contemplating filing criminal charges against officials and employees of the Lapeer District Library if they don’t remove Gender Queer from the library.

Miller relayed to Bridge Michigan earlier this week that the illustrations in the book could rise to the level of “accosting, enticing or soliciting a child for immoral purposes” which is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison according to Michigan law.

Additionally, another Michigan law discusses the prohibition of the dissemination, exhibition and display of sexual explicit material to minors which includes materials that are “patently offensive to contemporary local community standards of adults as to what is suitable for minors.”

Amy Churchill, director at the Lapeer Library told Bridge Michigan, “He’s (Miller) trying to intimidate us…I am not hard to find…If Mr. Miller wishes to arrest me, I am in my office working for the patrons and staff of the Lapeer District Library Monday through Friday.”