False stories of ‘porn in schools’ are decoys for book bans
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False stories of ‘porn in schools’ are decoys for book bans
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by Kasey Meehan, opinion contributor - 05/02/26 1:00 PM ET
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by Kasey Meehan, opinion contributor - 05/02/26 1:00 PM ET
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FILE – Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books that have been the subject of complaints from parents, including “Gender Queer” by Meir Kobabe, on Dec. 16, 2021, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
In 2021, alarming accusations of “porn in schools” — sounded by the conservative Florida Citizens Alliance in its 2021 Porn in Schools Report and later championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — spread like lice in a classroom. The so-called porn targeted by the report was not AI deepfakes or internet sites, but books for children and teenagers. Shockingly, its false message took hold far and wide.
Now, Congress is seizing on that fear with the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, which would withhold federal money to schools and libraries over books and materials with what its sponsors determine to be “sexually oriented material”.
In five years of recording book bans across the country, my organization, PEN America, hasn’t come across a banned book that contains pornography. Why? Because distributing pornography in schools is a felony that can carry a prison term. Of the thousands we’ve seen removed from classrooms and school libraries supposedly for porn, none meet the legal or even informal definition.
We have found that, overwhelmingly, books wrongly identified as porn represent gay and transgender characters and themes, depict race, racism, sexual experiences that do not constitute porn and themes that may be challenging, even uncomfortable, like gun violence and sexual abuse.
Book banners promise that removing these books will keep kids safe from supposedly scary, criminal and harmful stories. We disagree. Books and storytelling are an essential part of public education. We oppose book bans and advocate for access to diverse reading materials that reflect lived experiences or introduce new worlds, identities, histories and perspectives.
Laney Hawes, co-founder of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, once said: “Fear is effective.” Nothing is truer in the book banning crisis. A fear of pornography morphed into a fear of diversity, equity and inclusion, of educators and librarians supposedly indoctrinating kids and ultimately, of transgender and genderqueer kids themselves. Fear has led to laws, policies and executive orders about material in schools being “harmful to minors” or “sexually explicit.”
My organization has documented how vague language leads to overcompliance and sweeping restrictions on all types of books. If this new bill in Congress passes, will schools be afraid to buy Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, “In the Night Kitchen” because of young Mikey’s nudity? Or Michael Hall’s “Red: A Crayon’s Story,” with its messages about acceptance often applying to gender and sexuality?
And although the bill includes exemptions for a list of “classics” identified by Compass Classroom — developed as homeschooling teaching tool for a Bible-based perspective — modern classics like Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” are not exempted. These books would likely land on a no-purchase list due to depictions of sexual violence. Most explicitly, the bill would block the purchase of books about transgender people, censoring titles like Ami Polonsky’s tale about a transgender 12-year-old, “Gracefully Grayson.”
This bill would mean school districts across the country that reject book censorship would be thrust into this maelstrom. Just this week, over 100 organizations urged people who care about education, books, young readers and libraries to call their representatives in Congress and tell them to vote against this bill.
Misleading tales of pornography and dangerous books, librarians and teachers are false narratives that have been woven in community after community, affecting the quality of education kids receive. But the more you read, the more you are able to spot an unreliable narrator claiming there is porn when it is not there. That narrator presents contradictory and inconsistent messages, where logic is absent and truth is hidden.
Unreliable narrators like DeSantis conceal a larger agenda to weaken public schools in favor of vouchers and private school options as outlined in Project 2025. Others, such as outraged parents who see book excerpts taken out of context on Facebook, campaign to remove them, even