The Real Book Ban: When Biological Reality Gets You Fired

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Don’t fall for the propaganda. The Left constantly screams about “book bans” whenever parents object to explicit material or gender ideology in school libraries. Yet when an Oregon educator simply displayed books affirming that sex is binary and immutable, he was fired for “hostile expression of animus.” A split 9th Circuit panel just upheld that firing.

Roderick Theis, a licensed clinical social worker and education specialist with InterMountain Education Service District, kept Johnny the Walrus by Matt Walsh and the Bomberger's He Is He and She Is She in his offices. These children’s books state the obvious: boys are boys, girls are girls, and biology is not bigotry. Students sought them out. A teacher recorded the encounter. The district terminated him.

Judges nominated by Obama and Biden ruled that any message an educator conveys to students inside school walls is government speech, not protected speech. Personal expression vanishes the moment a student might see it. Dissenting Judge Lawrence VanDyke warned that this erases First Amendment rights and invites pure viewpoint discrimination. The majority’s logic would treat a family photo on a desk as official government speech.

This is not neutrality. Progressive posters and LGBTQ messaging remain welcome. Biological reality is the forbidden idea. The same activists who claim any restriction on their preferred books is fascist now celebrate the silencing of books that contradict their ideology. That is a de facto book ban—enforced not by parents or legislators, but by administrators and courts enforcing one orthodoxy.

Leftist ideology has captured the schools. Dissent is punished as animus. Students learn that some ideas are not merely wrong—they are forbidden. Education becomes indoctrination. The result is predictable: confusion, declining achievement, and a generation taught that reality itself is optional.

Schools exist to teach reading, writing, math, and truth—not to enforce ideological conformity. Parents, not activists, should decide what messages reach children. The Oregon case makes the double standard impossible to ignore. When affirming biological sex costs a man his job while progressive messaging is protected, the mask is off.