> Also, the argument that "reading anything helps literacy" is a weak excuse for including sexually oriented or gender-theory materials in a taxpayer-funded elementary curriculum

Elementary if you mean k-6 sure, but the ban applies to secondary school students too which is where the real problem is because, you know, sex ed and puberty start to become relevant. Also elementary can mean grades 7 and 8 where this topic is actually relevant because again sex ed and puberty and pretending like sex ed isn’t important for the government to fund/restricting it to abstinence is proven to result in exploding STD rates, teen pregnancy, higher abortion rates and other medical and psychological issues longer term. It’s almost like sex is an activity people will engage in regardless and all education does is make it safer and less traumatic. Who would have thunk. No one “on the other side” is arguing to make this material easily accessible to first graders, but that it should remain accessible to those going through puberty can start as early as grade 5 which is why there’s a common practice to start in grade 7 to capture it when it’s become broadly relevant and puberty has started maturing more towards sexuality.

Also the text you cited is meaningless because “art” is subjective - one man’s art is another’s profanity. For example Olympia by Manet was called obscene and is now considered foundational to the modernism movement. The last judgement by Michelangelo was also considered profane at times despite being important in the Renaissance and censored at times. The author of the book in question would certainly call her book an artistic expression so now you’re into characterizing on your opinion (or rather the opinion of some group that gets power) what counts as acceptable art and what counts as profane.

And finally schools should be a place for the opportunity for self directed learning so limiting it to instruction is silly. And what if a teacher of English wanted to instruct the students about censorship by examining the contents of banned books to grade 11 and grade 12?

Also, if you can’t see how the same group is also washing a cultural war on higher education, particularly when it comes to sexual and gender topics, I don’t know how you don’t see this fight extends there eventually as well. Again - this is fight is largely driven by the Christian nationalist movement and religious fundamentalist zealots on a crusade against education, even if they maybe have legitimate concerns in narrow cases, is going to really cause a lot more collateral damage.

If you really can’t see the problems with all of this, I don’t know how to help you. It’s a story we’ve seen on repeat throughout history, whether the Iranian revolution and similar shifts to fundamentalism in other Arabic countries, witch hunts, ISIS, Spanish Inquisition, etc etc. it’s always the dumbest people you know persecuting the people they don’t like for saying uncomfortable things.

I guess goodbye to the Enlightenment principles this country was founded on because there’s a claimed issue that can’t be demonstrated to have had any scientific evidence for harm? And science it’s important to use here because it is under attack - the same people have repeatedly tried to ban and fight teaching the theory of evolution and tried to push teaching “intelligent design” into the science room.