Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the right-wing book-purging organization Moms for Liberty, offered a righteous-sounding answer when asked this past weekend on “CBS Sunday Morning” what sort of book she wants to see remain in schools.
“Books that don’t have pornography in them,” she piously declared. “Let’s just put the bar really, really low. Books that don’t have incest, pedophilia, rape.”
That’s hard to square with what just happened in Martin County, Fla. The school district there recently decided to yank from its high school library circulation eight novels by Nora Roberts that are not “pornography” at all — largely prompted by objections from a single woman who also happens to be a Moms for Liberty activist.
“All of it is shocking,” Roberts told us. “If you don’t want your teenager reading this book, that’s your right as a mom — and good luck with that. But you don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book.”
This signals a new trend: Book banners are increasingly going after a wide variety of titles, including romance novels, under the guise of targeting “pornography.” That term is a very flexible one — deliberately so, it appears — and it is sweeping ever more broadly to include books that can’t be described as such in any reasonable sense.
Martin County is where 20 Jodi Picoult novels were recently pulled from school library shelves. This, too, was largely because of objections from that same Moms for Liberty activist, Julie Marshall, head of the group’s local chapter.
In addition to eight Roberts novels, the latest books removed from some Martin County high schools include Judy Blume’s 1975 classic “Forever …” featuring a high school couple extensively debating whether to have sex. Also purged: “The Fixer” by Bernard Malamud, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
The basis for Marshall’s objections to Roberts’s books, according to parental objection forms obtained and provided to us by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, is this: “These books are adult romance novels. They have absolutely no reason to be in school libraries.”
One can debate whether “adult romance novels” belong in high school libraries, but this process is absurd. That sole objection, with no elaboration, was lodged against a bunch of books written by a single author, leading to their removal.
What’s more, the objection to Roberts’s books appears extremely flimsy. Four of those books, which make up “The Bride Quartet,” are about friends seeking love as they build their wedding-planning business.
The books have some sex scenes, but the language is often vague enough that a child would have little idea what was happening. (“He touched, he tasted, he lingered until her quivers became trembles.”) And — spoiler alert — each book ends with a marriage proposal.
Roberts allowed that the books contain “sex” but noted that it is “monogamous” and “consensual.” Speaking of the censors, Roberts told us: “I’m surprised that they wouldn’t want teenagers to read about healthy relationships that are monogamous, consensual, healthy and end up in marriage.”
I guess those Moms for Liberty hide their Nora Roberts novels in their underwear drawers because you can be sure some of them read her. If it’s pornography then there are a whole lot of women, hooked on porn. Roberts has sold over 500 million books.
