Attempts to force removal of books from libraries– often called book bans or book challenges– have been steadily increasing in this country since 2020.
Recently, on National Right to Read Day, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reported 713 book challenges in 2025, just off the 2023 record high of 821 attempts to censor library materials.
A total of 4,235 unique titles were challenged last year, with Sold, by Patricia McCormick, a young adult novel about teenage sex trafficking in India, topping the list.
Book challenges are not new. As far back as 1650 in the American colonies, William Pynchon‘s pamphlet, The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, was burned by the Puritan government that it criticized.
For the past decade, challenges have been happening in new ways in the United States. Earlier book challenges came from individuals, usually parents concerned about their children having access to material the parents considered inappropriate.
Recently, these challenges come from organized movements including pressure groups, elected and appointed boards and government entities. Several states have passed laws restricting the type of materials available in libraries and schools based on the ideas or topics addressed in the materials.
The core work of libraries in promoting and supporting intellectual freedom and access to information is under threat from the federal government.
House Bill 7661, “The Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” now making its way through committee in the U.S. congress, is intended “to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to prohibit the use of funds provided under such Act to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.”
Providing literature is, after all, the core work of school libraries. As a librarian for 20 years, and a university library educator who directs the No. 1-ranked program in the U.S., I deeply understand the dangers of this precedent and the impact on present and future learning.
The act was introduced earlier this year by Congresswoman Mary Miller (IL-15), Chairwoman of the Congressional Family Caucus. It is straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, specifically its “Promise #1: Restore the family as the Centerpiece of American Life and protect our Children.” The document calls for the elimination of “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children.”
The bill reports that sexually oriented material “exposes . . . children to nude adults, individuals who are stripping, or lewd or lascivious dancing.” It then details exceptions, such as classic works of art and literature.
It concludes with what may be the heart of the matter, underscoring that sexually oriented material includes any material that “(ii) involves gender dysphoria or transgenderism.”
This is outrageous. Under this rule, the authors of the bill would eradicate the classical Greek deity Hermaphroditus, or Shakespeare’s classic sonnet number 20, a poem that speaks to and about “the master-mistress of my passion” (who has a “woman’s gentle heart” and “a man’s hue.”
Rather oddly, the exceptions exclude from consideration books “(ii) referenced in the article ‘Classics Every Middle Schooler Should Read’ by Thomas Purifoy, Jr. published by Compass Classroom and ‘Classics Every High Schooler Should Read’ by Mary Pierson Purifoy published by Compass Classroom” as they, according to the bill, “appeared on the date of enactment of this subsection.”
It is difficult to assess how the Purifoys are qualified in the world of history and literature to be the arbiters of obscenity in 21st century schools. Compass Classroom is a Christian homeschooling resource business that advertises that it teaches “your kids to think biblically about the world.”
Brief bios on its web site report Thoms Purifoy studied English at Vanderbilt University and Mary Purifoy has a “strong background” in history and literature, but no details about qualifications to set reading lists that would influence the curriculum of every school receiving any federal funding if the bill were to pass.
Interestingly, the middle school list includes Nathinel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the classic 19th century American novel about a young 17th century woman who conceives a child through an affair and is forced to wear the letter A as a symbol of her shame and guilt. Apparently, it’s okay to expose middle schoolers to adultery, as long as it’s heterosexual adultery.
This is eerily similar to the controlling patriarchal dystopian culture in Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Testaments,” now a series on Hulu. Not coincidentally, Atwood is an author who often appears on lists of book banning attempts.
To be sure, the assumption is every parent wants to do what’s best for their children. For many that means limiting their children’s exposure to material that doesn’t align with individual family values.
But there are dangers that come along with that protection, both psychic and physical dangers. The longer children wait to learn about sex and sexuality, the higher their risk of unwanted pregnancy, unwelcome sexual activity and sexually transmitted disease.
In the Netherlands, where teaching about these topics begins at an early age, research indicates that young people wait longer to become sexually active than in the United States, and they report positive early sexual experience.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Committee on Adolescent Health Care recommends, “Comprehensive sexuality education should begin in early childhood and continue through a person’s lifespan,” and that this education should “teach about forms of sexual expression, healthy sexual and nonsexual relationships, gender identity and sexual orientation and questioning, communication, recognizing and preventing sexual violence, consent, and decision making.”
Material addressing those topics is exactly the kind of content which the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act would remove from libraries and schools.
Libraries are in the business of providing resources that help individuals to understand themselves and others, including sexual and gender identities and the positive and negative possibilities that come with those identities.
Prohibiting school libraries from offering such resources will hurt youth and the culture of education. It is important to communicate to policymakers, school administrators, community leaders and congressional representatives that the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act will stop some of the good work that libraries do for everyone.
People are sexual beings, and it is important to understand that sexuality. Wearing blindfolds does not erase what is already there.