School librarians decide to stock sexually explicit books, frequently far more obscene than the passage above. Parents object to the presence of pornographic material in their children’s school libraries. And then the American education establishment and media try to tar them as “book banners,” suggesting they are racists, transphobes, and akin to Nazis.

The entire conversation on “book banning” has taken place under a false definition promulgated by PEN America, a left-wing advocacy group that purports to monitor an unprecedented spike in “bans.” But it defines “ban” so expansively as to render that term meaningless.

If a book has been temporarily removed, reviewed, and then returned to the shelves, it has been banned, according to PEN. If a school places a parental permission requirement on a book, it has been banned, according to PEN. If a school moves a book to a guidance counselor’s office, it has been banned, according to PEN.

[Can you buy the book in a store? Order it on line? Then it ain’t banned, and it’s idiotically tendentious to describe it that way. There are no banned books in the US. We can discuss and debate access policies in school libraries, but only if we approach it honestly. The fact that the Left refuses to do that tells us all we need to know about their interest in an honest debate. — Ed]