Just a reminder that our ongoing national orgy of book banning is nothing new. Consider Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography -- routinely censored since its first publication in 1791 -- or the Bible, various editions of which have been vigorously (and violently) suppressed since John Wycliff's pioneering English translation of the Latin Vulgate in the late 14th century.

The Qur'an's first publication in Europe, in 1530, was immediately ordered to be burned by the pope. Philosopher Immanuel Kant, otherwise a model citizen in the Prussian police state, got into trouble when his Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone offended Frederick William the Second in 1794. Novelist Salman Rushdie is STILL paying an awful price for having published The Satanic Verses in 1988.

D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov -- their struggles with censorship are too well known to rehash here. One could say the same about Huckleberry Finn, The Bell Jar, Naked Lunch...all this shit happened long before And Tango Makes Three (2005), let alone Gender Queer (2019). "Both read the Bible day and night,/But thou read'st black where I read white," wrote William Blake, which is not to say that all readings are equal. There's the issue of nuance, and nuance is in damned short supply nowadays.