Banned Books Week kicked off yesterday. The annual event is more relevant than ever, as across the country, aggressive Christian Nationalist groups are attempting to control what we and our children can read, see, learn and experience.
In light of that, here are some common myths about banned books:
Books bans in the United States tend to be localized; efforts are often made to remove titles from public schools and libraries. Not all these efforts to remove books succeed, but the fact that they are occurring at all is disturbing.
PEN America documented 6,870 instances of book bans during the 2024-25 school year. As the group noted in a recent report, “In 2025, book censorship in the United States is rampant and common. Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the banning of books, including bans on specific titles statewide.”
Many book bans in the United States are motivated by religious beliefs. Extreme Christian Nationalist groups are targeting books that offend their theology. Tailoring policy and laws to meet the demands of religious groups is definitely a church-state issue because it forces everyone to live under the religious beliefs of others.
Americans United, which was founded in 1947, recognized early on that religiously based censorship was a threat to church-state separation. In the early 1950s, the organization opposed efforts by religious groups to ban books, magazines, stage plays and films that these groups considered “blasphemous” or “sacrilegious.”
This is essentially an argument from economic privilege. Not everyone has the resources or the ability to purchase books online. The whole point of school libraries and public libraries is to make material available to everyone, regardless of economic status.
The best way for parents to ensure that their children are reading age-appropriate material is to accompany them to the library and guide their selections. Yes, some books are clearly written for adult audiences. But banning these books because they might fall into the hands of children infantilizes us all. A better answer is for parents to get involved and make decisions about what their own children (but no one else’s) can read.
Christian Nationalists make this charge to inflame public opinion. Public schools and public libraries don’t contain material that meets the legal definition of obscenity as outlined by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1973 case Miller v. California.
Christian Nationalists are quick to label “obscene” or “pornographic” any book they dislike, including titles that contain LGBTQ+ characters, sex manuals or factual books for pre-teens about puberty. While these books may contain content that offends Christian Nationalists, they in no way meet the high court’s legal definition of obscenity.
There is a simple solution for dealing with books you dislike: Don’t read them. You are free to make that decision for yourself, but you have no right to make it for others.
P.S. Learn more about book bans and what Americans United is doing to oppose them during an Oct. 9 webinar “Uncensored: Youth Voices Against Book Bans” from 7:30-8:30 p.m. EDT. During this free, virtual roundtable discussion, you’ll learn about the dangers of book bans and how to effectively oppose them in your community.
