We do have problems with book-banning in the United States. There are very real attempts to ban books, including many such attempts at school libraries. As noted by FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley, “There’s always been some amount of book banning, but this is unprecedented. It is a tsunami — it is an avalanche of censorship.”

That said, many people on the "political left" are being disingenuous when they claim that the phrase "book banning" accurately describes the controversy regarding grade-schooler access to books with sexually explicit images, including a book called Gender Queer. In "If I disagree with my liberal tribe, does that make me a conservative? A lot of rhetoric on the left is proving to be unpersuasive — and even alienating," Kat Rosenfield tells us what is really at stake regarding that book, as well as the wider ramifications.  Here are a few excerpts:

The graphic novel “Gender Queer,” a memoir of sexual and gender identity written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe, has been described as the “most banned book in the country.” A flashpoint in the current culture war over the content of school libraries and curricula, it is at once celebrated and despised. Liberal commentators describe it as groundbreaking and essential, a work of art that helps struggling young people to feel seen; conservatives denounce it as pornographic and demand its removal from children’s spaces.

Almost all the objections to “Gender Queer” center on a single page that appears about two-thirds of the way through the book. If you’ve followed this controversy online, you’ve probably seen the illustration in question. If you’ve only heard about it via cable or traditional news, then you probably haven’t — at least not without a censor’s blur in front. This is because the scene depicts a moment in which the protagonist and a partner experiment with a strap-on dildo.... It’s racy. Enough so that the page can’t be shown on TV, not even in the late-night hours when the Federal Communications Commission’s obscenity regulations are relaxed; enough so that I can’t name the sex act in question without playing an elaborate game of charades to avoid running afoul of the Globe’s editorial standards. (Hint: It rhymes with “whoa, bob.”) And while reasonable people can disagree on whether the scene qualifies as pornography per se, the fact that this is a debatable point at all is revealing in its own right. Once you’re haggling over whether an illustrated sex act is dictionary-definition pornographic, surely you’ve already ceded the point of whether it’s appropriate for children.

In a less fractious, less polarized moment, this is where the debate would end. It is possible to imagine a world in which “Let’s not stock the [rhymes-with-whoa-bob] comic book in the middle school library” is not a controversial statement. Alas, we don’t live in that world. Instead, we live in a world where not only are we locked in a stalemate over whether the [rhymes-with-whoa-bob] book belongs in the middle school library, but the way you answer this question determines your side in the culture war at large. That is: If you believe that illustrated depictions of a person getting a you-know-what while wearing a you-know-what are best reserved for adult readers, you must be a conservative . . . or worse.

Objections by parents to “Gender Queer” and other sexually explicit books are frequently characterized in media coverage as stemming from hatred or bigotry. One New York Times article quoted a PEN America director who ascribed the controversy to “anti LGBTQ+ backlash.” Similar criticisms are leveled at the parents’ rights movement that is challenging the teaching of race, gender, and sexuality in US schools.