On July 13, U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert took to the House floor to promote an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would ban the purchase of “pornographic books” for military schools. It quickly raised questions about the definition of pornography, recalling Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous phrase: “I know it when I see it.”
But even that quote was from an era of more moderate judges — conservatives who focused less on legislating their own opinions, and more on representing the law as it pertained to all Americans. It wasn’t a perfect system, this leaning on decency and a personal set of judicial ethics, but it worked for a time. Now, thanks to Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, all three Trump appointees and the natural weakness of John Roberts as leader of the Supreme Court, we are no longer in that era.
Today we are living in a world of half-truths and bad-faith arguments. Which means it’s the perfect governmental Petrie dish for someone like Lauren Boebert, someone who is just a carrier for the disease of bad ideas she’s contracted from other powers seeking to manipulate the system. Someone who seeks power and influence rather than thought and action. Someone who speaks in favor of the limiting of free speech in libraries, and can’t help but pronounce it “liberries.”
So come the empty extremist arguments based on six books cherry-picked for maximum outrage by whatever forces that want to move America back to the Dark Ages of civil rights, when apparently some Americans were quietly resentful that they couldn’t express their clouded exclusionary sentiments that everyone who wasn’t just like them in every way should either shut up, move away or die.
But here’s where ignorance comes into play, Representative Boebert. When you don’t know what you’re talking about, and someone hands you something and says, “You should be pissed at this,” you have two choices: educate yourself, or accept someone else’s agenda as your own. And education, sadly for Colorado and now America at large, has never been your strong suit.
Any half-decent wordsmith can slant anything so that it outrages someone. It’s not even hard. Heard the one about the amoral runaway who shacks up with a group of dirty workaday midgets who do God knows what with her in their tiny beds? Or the one about the parentless boy who comes to a young girl’s window at night to lure her and her young siblings away — with the help of a short-skirted fairy, no less?
The books targeted by Boebert aren’t classics of juvenile or young adult literature — at least not yet. But many of them are award-winning best-sellers, with the imprimatur of media outlets (including Fox, in some cases), Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and nationally recognized library systems. They’re all lauded by people who know better about childhood development, education and, well, reality. But still: Let’s take these books one at a time.
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
Amazon Reading Age: 13+
When Boebert talks about this New York Times bestseller that Booklist called “an absolute necessity,” she refers to the subtitle “Manifesto” in air quotes, as though that means something. Maybe because it’s supposed to get lumped in with other manifestos that offend her? But it’s telling that she ignores the word to which it’s literally paired: “memoir,” which suggests that the purpose of the book is to tell one American’s story. Of course, it’s also telling that instead of the personal insights offered by the author, Boebert boils it down to “oral sex, ejaculation, anal sex, pornography and masturbation.”
Microcosm Publishing
Amazon Reading Age: 14-17
Boebert’s sole comment on this best-selling YA nonfiction book is that it “discusses the casual hookup site Grindr, and includes detailed information on how to have gay anal sex.” Weird that Boebert has to specify that it’s “gay anal” to which she’s objecting. Are the strategies for anal sex different when it’s between two men? Are you objecting to anal sex in general, Representative? Can you elaborate on your position, and perhaps (as these honest and brave authors have) talk about your own experience with such things? Or is it just the gay part we’re really objecting to here?
Oni Press
Amazon Reading Age: 18+
Again with attacking the memoir. There might be “explicit imagery of oral sex,” as Boebert says in her only accusation against this award-winning graphic novel, but you know — it’s a graphic novel. Form and genre are especially pertinent here, since she's specifically bringing up imagery. While oral sex is hardly the point of the book — it’s more about self-identity, which is probably the thing to which Boebert and her ilk most vociferously object — it's there, I guess. But for a generation like Boebert’s, which passed around highlighted copies of the dirty parts of V.C. Andrews’s Flowers in the Attic (also available at my middle-school library back in the day, come to think of it), it rings hollow to assume that’s the source of the outrage.
G.P. Putnam's and Sons Books for Young Readers
Amazon Reading Age: 10-13
Boebert spits out that this book is about “a twelve-year-old boy who starts a talent agency business for child drag queen performers. One of the kids he signs is an eighth-grader named Mistress of Madness and Mayhem.” Okay, first off, the character’s actual name is Julian Vasquez, and his full drag name is Coco Caliente, Mistress of Madness and Mayhem — was that last Boebert objection about a kid referring to himself with the words “madness and mayhem"? Because, Representative, let me introduce you to any teenager ever. More to the point, the objection to this book is the heart of the slippery slope where Boebert is treading. Where at least the first three had specific sex acts to cite, this book doesn’t. And still it’s lumped in with the suggestion of graphic sex acts, which is unfair for a whole host of reasons. Not to mention that it sounds like the main character of this book is doing a great job with the concept of the free enterprise system, so there’s something even conservatives could get behind. Honestly, if there’s anything I’m personally offended by, it’s the purposeful misspelling of the titular word “Werk.”
Enslow Publishers
Amazon Reading Age: 14-17
Boebert vilifies this book as one that “explores the journey of a character who questions whether she is gender-queer.” Again, what’s the objection here? We’ve gone from explicit sex acts to intensely personal questions of identity. In books meant to reach out to young people who might just now be asking those questions themselves, or who have friends who do. Even if it’s not our story, this is what literature does, Representative: shows stories not our own so we can better empathize and understand those around us. How terrible and small the world would be without it.
Julián Is a Mermaid, Jessica Love
Amazon Reading Age: 2-6 years (as rated by customers)
Boebert complains that this book is about “a boy who wants to become a mermaid…who regularly strips down to his underwear.” (If undergarments are the problem, Representative, don’t read the Captain Underpants series.) Boebert literally sneers as she utters the phrase “where he can freely express himself.” And there’s the problem: Thank you for illustrating it so effectively.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Boebert concludes at the bottom of her very slippery slope. “Let’s stop grooming our children. It’s gross, and it is wrong.”
In the YouTube video, Boebert is followed by Pennsylvania Representative Chrissy Houlahan, who speaks in opposition to the amendment, rightly labeling it as “a naked attempt at discrimination.” To which Boebert later stumbles through a rebuttal by saying “Nuh-uh” and then comparing these books to the fact that she can’t show triple-X-rated movies to her own kids because it’s illegal. Which it isn’t, because they’re your kids and you can do whatever irresponsible and batshit-crazy thing you want, like showing them inappropriate materials and letting them pose with assault rifles for Christmas, but whatever.
There are lots of things in today’s America that are “gross and wrong,” Representative Boebert, but the books you list aren’t among them. Rather, the legislative overreaction that is your proposed amendment is what’s abhorrent, especially given that it’s predicated on the self-righteous and false-pious position that anything you don’t personally understand is evil. Likewise, the term “grooming” shouldn’t be a political buzzword — it should be reserved for the actual child predators in our society, who are more than plentiful enough (even in conservative congregations, mind you) — and to use that label broadly is not only disingenuous, but it does a disservice to the real victims of such abuse.
And then there’s book banning, which is just one of the points of attack from any would-be despotic force who wants nothing more than to wrest control of a people by way of the demands of its smallest minds.
In fact, Representative Boebert: Banning books is exactly how America gets representatives such as yourself. And that's just "gross and wrong."
