Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) and George Santos (NY) have introduced legislation that would ban some books from public schools across the United States.
According to LGBTQ Nation, the bill is H.R. 863 and was filed last week by Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who claims the purpose of the law is to “end the sexualization of children in schools.”
The full text of the bill has not been uploaded to the Congressional database and Mills hasn’t posted it to his website yet, but its description says its purpose is “to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing sexually explicit material to a school or an educational agency, to prohibit Federal funds from being provided to a school that obtains or an educational agency that distributes sexually explicit material, and for other purposes.”
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The bill also dovetails with right-wing fear about “pornography” in schools. Many right-wing activists over the past several years have called any book that discusses sexuality at all “pornography,” including books that discuss non-heterosexual family structures. The language has been used to raise the stakes as conservative parents try to get books by LGBTQ+ authors banned from school districts.
Of course, schools aren’t distributing porn to students and never have. But it seems that some right-wing Republicans (i.e. the majority of the party) are eager to try and suggest otherwise in a desperate attempt to appear they have any original ideas about what young people should learn while in school.
Ironically, Santos is openly gay. Which makes you wonder why Greene has suddenly become his BFF. After all, she has repeatedly claimed that LGBTQ Americans are trying to “groom” children in an attempt to recruit and sexualize them.
Santos has even said that same-sex couples should not be allowed to raise children, telling conservative host John Stubbins:
“The family unit has been under attack for decades, decades. In different ways, right? The flavor of the decade is same-sex couples. ‘Oh, that’s so OK!’ Look, to each their own, I don’t have anything against that but they’re teaching in school how kids that, you know, you don’t need a mommy and a daddy, you can have two mommies, you can have two daddies. I think that’s a little much for kids, right?”
