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At the end of May, The Virginian-Pilot, a daily newspaper in Norfork, Virginia, ran a legal notice in its classified section warning readers that it might become illegal to sell or lend a particular book.
Maia Kobabe’s comics memoir, “Gender Queer,” had been the subject of an obscenity lawsuit in Virginia Beach, and the judge in the case found probable cause to believe that the book was “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors.”
This is the latest salvo in arguably a years-long war on queer cartoonists and authors waged by Republicans eager to shore up support by persecuting and slandering minorities.
They display a growing bigotry toward not just real queer people, but queer characters who might help children discover their own identity. And queer comics — with their unavoidable images of marginalized people — are regularly targeted, often by conservative influencers and even lawmakers.
But huge damage has already been done by the broader censorious focus on “Gender Queer” and other books about queer characters.
This of course is backwards, cruel and dystopian. Queer comics should be celebrated, especially when they help young people learn to accept themselves.
Herein lies the issue. Gender queer authors and activists are pressuring schools and liberals politicians to incorporate more sexual material into sexual education classes, and supporting sexualizing children before they are sexually mature. They believe that minors should be taught about explicit sex acts, be instructed on how to use sex toys, and be allowed to have permanent life-altering gender reassignment surgery before they are legally able to get a piercing or a tattoo. These individuals claim that removing books and graphic novels that depict mature content is bigotry and an attack on LGBTQ+ rights.
Parents who oppose these ideologies and practices are often supporters of equal rights, but against sexualizing children before they are sexually mature. They do not wish for their pre-pubescent students to be allowed to read novels and graphic novels with illustrations that display minors or adults having sex or performing sex acts on each other. Unfortunately, because many public schools are being encouraged by the Biden Administration to honor the LGBTQ+ community’s movement and incorporate more gender queer materials to further “equity,” parents who wish to have the books in question removed have been vilified and denied.
Families that feel as if school boards have abandoned them and their children in the name of identity politics have had to turn to lawmakers, and political candidates who are running for office, to tackle this ongoing issue. Parental rights have been challenged time and time again, especially in regards to political bias being taught in the classroom — which includes gender queer material being promoted. School board election upsets have been witnessed across the country, and now that this lawsuit has offered parents more support, the hope is that more educators will return focus to the students and offer educational age-appropriate books instead of content that is brought in to solidify political ties.
Thirty percent of Millennials identify as LGBTQ, according to a soon-to-be released study that is based on scientific polling data. Among Christians the numbers were lower—but only slightly, with just under 30 percent of Millennial Christians identifying as LGBTQ.
The portion of the population that describes itself as gay has varied over the years, from 10 percent, based on research by Alfred Kinsey and widely promoted by the National Gay Task Force in 1977, to less than 6 percent in a recent Gallup poll. The pollster who worked on the new study, George Barna, attributes the unusually high number he found to social and news media coverage that makes it "safe and cool" for young Americans to identify as LGBTQ—whether or not it represents their actual sexual orientation.