Websites like Pornhub and OnlyFans frequently take the blame for getting people addicted to pornography, but now even the Scholastic Book Fair isn't safe! The beloved book publisher is now coming under fire for triggering one woman’s compulsion to seek out adult content.
That’s right; someone is blaming the school-based book fair where we all bought Goosebumps books and erasers shaped like animals for corrupting the youth of America.
Lanah Burkhardt told the Conroe Independent School District in Texas that reading a single line in a Scholastic book when she was 11 years old changed her life forever.
We should have predicted that this happened in the Lone Star state.
Many of us can point to a book we read growing up that altered our reality, but Burkhardt said that reading the phrase "a single kiss" in a book was all it took to cause her to start hunting for “other books that gave me pleasure" which "led to internet searches,” according to reporting by The Messenger.
Oh, you sweet summer child.
By the time she was 13, the 20-year-old Texas woman said she had become depressed and told her mom she was contemplating suicide.
Burkhardt told the school board that she wanted them to ban Drama, the book that started her down the road to porn addiction. She said the book featured a picture of two characters kissing and insisted that "getting rid of Scholastic books and their book fairs will inevitably protect kids." Normally right-wing zealots are railing against books with queer characters, but now even showing a kiss at all is grounds for banning a book.
And because it’s Texas, this ridiculous logic worked on the Conroe Independent School District, which voted to restrict students’ access to Drama before high school, reported the publication.
But, of course, that’s not the end of the story because you can’t be a conservative without also being a liar and a hypocrite.
It turns out Burkhardt is a public relations coordinator for the conservative publishing company Brave Books, who decided the Scholastic Book Fairs needed to be shut down after creating an "extensive report,” according to the Public Information Substack.
Burkhardt’s wild performance at the school board meeting was then publicized by SkyTree Book Fairs, which markets itself as "an alternative to the sexually explicit content distributed in Scholastic's book fairs." The Substack also found evidence SkyTree Book Fairs and BraveBooks are connected.
When you visit their website, you’re greeted by a cheerful pop-up window that reads, “Learn About Scholastic's Agenda & Why SkyTree Was Created!”
That’s not even the only thing she was lying about. She may have also made up her entire story because she was home-schooled and wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be turned to the dark side by a book she found at a school’s book fair.
Even if the story were true, how did one woman’s “porn addiction journey” become every kid's problem?
