Now that I think about it, I’ve never seen anyone quote specific parts of challenged and banned books. They just say the content is this and that and leave it there.

Tried even searching for specific quotes just now but can’t find anything. So I guess it either has never happened, or happens so rarely that instances of it are difficult to find.

Yeah, school board meetings targeted by Moms for “Liberty”. Online, you can find rightwingers bitching, but it’s a lot of exaggerated stuff.

In high school, I read some pretty sexual stuff (Canterbury Tales are fuckin vulgar, Toni Morrison writes in a very erotic way at times. Nobody ever bitched about that though because it was straight eroticism. Any page I’ve seen from these newer books is only “objectionable” because its not cishet sex/eroticism.

With the exception of Genderqueer, there isn’t much “pornographic” material. Genderqueer has a scene where there is a blowjob, and I can’t speak to it’s nature since I haven’t read it. This Book is Gay also gets some flak because it is essentially a manual on some gay topics, such as sex, grindr, dating, etc. But I wouldn’t consider that porn, you watch porn to masturbate, not learn how to safely date and have sex. Both books are meant for older teens, and both are important, especially This Book is Gay.

There is an effort to conflate porn with queerness. Most books that are “pornographic” are merely just about queer topics, or have a queer cast. This is similar to older efforts to call LGBTQ+ folk “groomers” or “seducers,” such as around the time of gay marriage being legalized, or during gay power movements after stonewall, or when states were legalizing gay marriage, and so on.

This new phase of calling books “pornographic” is just bigots trying to prevent queer representation, and while some books are explicit, they are a smokescreen for a broader queer erasure.