BOOK BANNING: Conservatives don’t support it

In response to Reid Harlocker’s letter of June 11, “book banning” is not on the agenda of IFF, KRCC or the parents who have been protesting the penetration of gender and racialist ideology in the public schools, including here. As they do so often, leftists misrepresent conservative positions, give them snappy names (Book Banning, Don’t Say Gay) then invoke the devil (powerbrokers, money men, fascist dogs, etc.).

Book-banning is reprehensible and illegal under the First Amendment, full stop. Government has no right to exercise prior restraint on publishers or ban the sale of books. Government does have the right to determine what material is appropriate to present in its libraries and curricula, and even to prevent a purveyor of publications of “prurient interest” from setting up shop in certain parts of town, based on community standards.

This used to be hum-drum common sense until the strange ideas that America was founded on slavery and that gender is fluid infected our private and public schools of education and found their way to Washington.

Authoritarianism? Who is re-writing the beautiful English language by redefining its pronouns and insisting that we all adopt them? Who assaulted Riley Gaines for exercising her right of free speech?

All of the books that Harlocker is concerned about are available at brick-and-mortar and online bookstores. If Harlocker thinks that books presenting instruction and depiction of fellatio and anal sex are appropriate content for schools to present to kids, he should tell us why.

DAVID deMILO

Coeur d’Alene