Answerman

Are We At Risk for Censorship of LGBTQ+/Adult Material Because of U.S. 2025 Federal Policies?

traverse390 asks:

Are we at risk of censorship of LGBTQ+/adult material re: U.S. 2025 federal policies?

The short answer to your question is yes. Of course, there is a risk of increased censorship of LGBQT+ and “adult material” in 2025 and beyond for those of you living in the United States.

The worrying trend of banning books in schools and public libraries across the United States will worsen before it gets better. The Comic Book Journal reported in September that:

“The American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, which tracks book challenges and bans around the U.S., recorded that 378 different graphic novels were threatened with bans or challenges in 2023, with a total of 1,020 total censorship attempts. In the last three years, the numbers have seen a huge jump – 2023's total censorship attempts are twenty times what they were just three years ago in 2020.”

In March last year, The Guardian reported on the recent American Libraries Association report covering all of 2023's known book bans. Amongst other things, the report detailed “Seventeen states [that] saw attempts to ban more than 100 books: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.”

Why is the banning of books so prevalent across American public schools and libraries?

Sadly! The banning of books and the occasional outright burning of them has been a regular occurrence throughout American history. Despite its relatively young age as a country, the USA has been banning books pretty much from the get-go. Think about it this way. The first white Europeans arrived in the country and settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 and these same “Founders” banned their first book in 1637.

The first book ever to be banned in the United States was New English Canaan by Thomas Morton, who established an early colony in Massachusetts where settlers and native people co-existed fairly harmoniously. Morton espoused a more pragmatic approach to colonization with the land's original inhabitants. This was seen as a threat by the Puritan settlers, and Morton was subsequently twice exiled back to England, where he wrote New English Canaan. He was not a white savior of any kind. He was a fur trader and businessman, and most of the book describes the “opportunities” the New World presented to entrepreneurial readers. Nonetheless, his pragmatic views on peaceful co-existence with native people were seen as a threat to the fabric of the new society the Puritans were attempting to build, and he was punished for it.

It is the fear that certain types of ideas, practices, and beliefs can “undermine” the cultural fabric of America that drives book bans. So! It comes as no surprise that graphic novels that depict “non-traditional” romantic and erotic relationships and/or characters who are non-conformist to the hetero-dominant culture will be targeted by censorious organizations and individuals.

While I wish to focus specifically on the type of material that matters to you in your question, I would like to remind everyone that it isn't just LGBTQ+ material that is being banned. Far from it…

The most recent high-profile case of statewide book banning, including comics and manga, happened last year in Tennessee when the state legislature brought in the HB843 mandate. Books in school libraries must be suitable for the age and maturity levels of the students. Some of the types of content deemed inappropriate for school-age children include any type of nudity, “descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement,” excessive violence, and of course, LGBTQ-related subjects.

ANN reported on the mandate at the time that includes the first eight volumes of Assassination Classroom, Jujutsu Kaisen, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes (volumes 1 and 3), all of Attack on Titan, and Akira, which really pisses me off. Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha is also on the banned books list in Tennessee, which is a perennial favorite of many younger readers. It contains some sexually suggestive moments, and some of the key characters, including the protagonist, possess an element of what one could argue is gender fluidity, but it is incredibly subtle, and I am genuinely surprised it made it onto this list.

The depiction of LGBTQ characters in manga is not uncommon, and so you have every right to worry about whether more works could be banned in the future. Manga like Sailor Moon, Claudine, Hunter X Hunter, and Rose of Versailles vary in their depictions of same-sex couples and/or openly trans characters. Some depictions are more overt, others are more subtle, coded even. Some are serious and core to the story. Other characters provide light relief. Nonetheless! They exist and they are featured in some of the most popular and important works of the past forty years, which I find surprising because Japan is also a socially conservative country. For these works and for these characters to exist, and be known and popular with readers is remarkable and a testament to the fact that the majority don't have major issues with depictions of “alternative lifestyles” in literature, contrary to what much of the media and some politicians tell us.

ScreenRant reported in November that Richmond County School District in North Carolina recently banned (pending a review) Unico: Awakening Volume 1, the new reimaging of Osama Tezuka's classic manga by Samuel Sattin and illustrator, Gurihiru following a complaint from a “concerned parent.” The parent's six-year-old son purchased a copy of the manga at a local Scholastic Book Fair, and she was “shocked to discover depictions of animal cruelty (I hope they never read Tezuka's Buddha Volume 1. That poor bunny!) and gun violence”.

The book ban movement in the USA over recent years has most definitely grown, and as The Guardian reports it is “particularly prevalent in Republican-led states, as religious-political activism gains strength,” but the canceling, boycotting, and banning of pop culture in your country is something that unfortunately is a “both sides” issue, and it cuts to the bone of your First Amendment rights. The more organized book banners know this, and while many of us may wonder whether your federal law-makers might seek to increase the scope of these bans, it isn't necessary to achieve the ultimate goal of reducing access to what they may consider to be “dangerous” and/or “unsuitable” reading material for children and young adults. The market will ultimately decide what reading material you can have access to, and unfortunately, book banners know this.

The Unico manga is a case in point. School libraries never used to hold graphic novels or manga in them. Public libraries barely did either. Unico is a flagship manga title for Scholastic's Graphix imprint, which is dedicated to publishing creator-owned graphic novels for early, middle-grade, and young adult readers. Graphix launched in 2005 with Jeff Smith's epic series, BONE #1: Out From Boneville. This imprint came about in part because of the huge shift in boy's reading habits starting in the late 90s. This is when I, as a 15-year-old, first discovered “edgier” books like Alan Moore's V for Vendetta and The Killing Joke in my local library.

This recent ban, “pending review,” of Unico is noteworthy because Scholastic is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books and a major supplier of books to school libraries. They have a better understanding of what is and isn't acceptable when it comes to age-appropriate literature for school-age children than almost any other publisher. Censorship is a slippery slope, and what one parent may find unacceptable for their six-year-old to read is not necessarily the same as another parent who also monitors what content their kids are consuming. I wanted to use Unico as an example of censorship that isn't driven by an organization, and which doesn't seem politically or religiously motivated.

America's moral majority has been at war with comics as a corrupting influence since the early 1950s and what is now commonly referred to as the “Moral Panic,” which was a reaction by the press, religious groups, and politicians against what many considered to be the gradual decline in standards of decency and morality in the media and the arts. Especially film-making and comic books. This moral panic also coincided with a rise in reporting around juvenile delinquency. Senate hearings were held, and miles of column inches were printed, resulting in the voluntary implementation of the Comics Code Authority, which was a self-policing and self-censoring program committed to by all of the major comics magazine publishers at the time. Unbelievably, “The Code” continued well into the 2000s with the final holdouts, DC and Bongo Comics, discontinuing their carrying of the unmistakable CCA badge on every comic cover they printed.

What concerns me is that with your country's rightwards political momentum when it comes to issues of identity and culture, alongside its anti-globalization economic policies, increasing downward pressure on manga and comics publishing will impact readers well beyond the USA's borders. If America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Less than 21% of comics, manga, and graphic novels are currently printed within the USA. If aggressive tariffs are brought in against the majority of America's major international trading partners, including China, where 24% of domestic publishers print their books, the price of the average tankoban is likely to increase considerably. This will mean lower print sales. Combine this with potentially more states banning more manga, and it isn't out of the question that some books may be discontinued and others not printed at all. And sorry, Canadians, Aussies, and Brits, but if fewer books are published in the USA, that means fewer titles for you, too.

I abhor the idea that a book can be dangerous, and I find it ridiculous to believe that a comic or a book can fundamentally change the reader's sexual or gender identity. I've read a lot of books in my lifetime, and none of them caused me to become a straight, cis-hetero male. I am just one, and that identity has, in all likelihood, influenced what types of comics, books, novels, etc. I like to read, as well as what types of movies, series, animation, etc. I like to watch the types of video games I like to play. I feel seen all day long by the culture I inhabit. Erasing what little pop culture is available that recognizes those of us who are not part of “the norm” seems unnecessarily cruel to me.

Based on the strength of some of the aforementioned LGBTQ-friendly manga brands, it could be commercially damaging for some of the biggest names in manga publishing, too. I believe that a change is coming, and it may well impact the print publishing of manga and comics in a significant way. With English-language digital manga and comic sales barely representing 20% of all graphic novel sales currently, perhaps these changes will signal a significant increase in digital manga sales.

“What will potential tariffs mean for comic publishers in 2025? “We'll likely have less customers.” - The Comics Journal

“The state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week” - The Comics Journal, September 2024 [Source: The Comic Book Journal “The state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week”, Gina Gagliana, September 23, 2024

“Books bans in US schools and libraries surged to record highs in 2023 - Though the list is broad, many of the 4,240 books were targeted because they related to issues of LGBTQ+ communities or race ” - The Guardian, March 14, 2024

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