Kissing Image in a Graphic Novel Can Lead to Porn Addiction, Claims Activist Trying to Censor Books

Depictions of kissing can be harmful to children and lead to a porn addiction, or so poor  Lanah Burkhardt would have you believe. At the tender age of 11 she read an illustrated book she got from a Scholastic Book Fair that had a silhouette of two fully-dressed high-schoolers sharing a kiss on a stage. The book in question? Raina Telgemeier’s Drama. From there, Lanah “looked for other books that gave [her] pleasure,” she said in her testimony before a Texas school board in early November.

Obviously this is a very true story and shows a genuine danger to children. That’s why millions of children are traumatized by the kiss between Moses and Zipporah in 1998’s Prince of Egypt movie, dozens upon dozens of kisses in Disney movies and their illustrated companion books, and there are protests against diamond advertisements on bus stops that show a kiss.

Wait.

That doesn’t sound right.

I dare say a vast majority of people have been exposed to kisses through multiple forms of media and not developed a porn addiction. Kissing is in our tv shows, advertisements,, books (illustrated and not,) video games, and literally every form of media there is. Kisses, and depictions of kissing, are not gateways to porn addictions, or The Princess Bride would be banned. It’s a kissing movie, after all.

But if the allegation of depictions of a tame kiss leading to porn addition is untrue, why make it? It turns out that Burkhardt’s testimony is part of a disquieting, well-reported trend, and her LinkedIn profile shows that she’s the Public Relations Coordinator at Brave Books, a company that’s just started a book fair intended to compete with Scholastic. 

To understand what’s going on here, beyond the obvious attempt to fool very gullible people into becoming clients of the business Burkhardt works for, let’s back up a little to October 17th, and something that started even before then.

On October 17th, 2023, Scholastic Book Fair announced that they were creating a separate, (separate but equal?) category of books to allow schools to ‘opt out’ of having diverse books at the fairs. It claimed this was to help school administrators and employees avoid taking more heat in states that have been censoring what’s available for children to read. 

It’s true that books, reading, and libraries are increasingly under attack, but backlash was swift and loud, as it should be. Scholastic is the big company in this field, and it sets the behavior for other book fairs. If it was censoring, no book fair would be able to avoid demands that they censor their options too. Thankfully the company walked back the decision. 

That’s where Brave Books comes in. Brave Books exclusively publishes books by right-wing pundits. As the book bans that extremists push for are against historical, racial, and LGBTQIA+ topics and not poorly written nationalistic propaganda, Brave Books stands to profit from every push. This is also the organization that was booking rooms in libraries across the USA, touring and leading to harassment of libraries and staff, up to and including bomb threats.

Brave Books clearly saw an opportunity when Scholastic chose to do the right thing. They created SkyTree Book Fairs, which just happened to promote Burkhardt’s “testimony.” 

SkyTree’s president, Riley Lee, helped use the school board meeting to try to sell SkyTree to the board. Neither Lee nor Burkhardt disclosed their connections to Brave Books or SkyTree.

It’s a little astounding that not only did the school board decide to restrict the book Burkhardt read, Drama, to 9th grade and above based on what they heard, but one board member also suggested replacing Scholastic Book Fairs. Testimony that a child could see through if they took a moment to think was considered compelling enough to act on. This is the state of our school boards, and they’re overseeing education. 

Drama, a charming story about putting on a play in middle school, has long been one of the most banned books in America, even before the current wave of challenges and attacks on the First Amendment. The reason? Acknowledging that some of the characters are gay. 

Censorship of history, of racial inequality, of gender and sexual issues, do not serve our country, our world, or our children. The misinformation and propaganda spread by people like Burkhardt and others do real damage and it’s something that every reader and really every person should be concerned about.