Banned books for sale

Walk into any bookstore these days and you are likely to find a table of "Banned Books." This always seems strange to me, for if the books are banned, what are they doing in the store?

I live in Florida, where controversy swirls around government efforts to keep certain books and certain kinds of books out of public schools. But is this really censorship? Again, the books are readily available in bookstores for any parents who might want to buy them for their children. I doubt that many parents do, for these books often contain images and language that many consider pornographic, or at least too sexual for children. Newspapers, television stations and radio stations could not reproduce these controversial excerpts for their audiences. Even school board members are uncomfortable when images from the books are displayed or certain passages read at their meetings. So why should the books be in school libraries and classrooms?

Weren't some of those books on the "banned" table actually banned somewhere in America at some time? Rarely is that the case. A few books such as Ulysses and Lady Chatterly's Lover may have been restricted in certain places, but courts have consistently ruled in favor of public access.

Most of the so-called banned books are simply books that have been challenged by parents. Parents who discover certain words and certain sexual acts in their children's assigned reading sometimes object to their school board. An objection is hardly censorship. Even if the school board removes the book from the school's curriculum, it does not qualify as censorship. It is the school board's job to determine which books are suitable or unsuitable for their students, just as it is a parent's job to determine which books are suitable or unsuitable for their children. 

Barton Swain pointed out in The Wall Street Journal last weekend that the "closest thing to real book bans in the U.S. today is perpetrated by precisely the sort of people who bewail book bans." These include publishers who refuse to publish certain kinds of books by certain authors on certain subjects and booksellers, especially Amazon, that refuse to sell such books as When Harry Became Sally and Irreversible Damage, both critical of the transgender movement.

Any book readily available for sale is hardly banned. Is the Bible taught in your child's public school? Does that make it a banned book? Have you found a Bible on any Banned Books table?