This week, a small-town school board in rural Pennsylvania snatched The Buffalo Tree, by Adam Rapp, from the curriculum of the local high school.

America has a long history of arbitrarily banning books — hell, the whole world does, for that matter — and it’s usually in the name of some rabid religious fervor fueled by a powerful, albeit brief, wave of conservative thought.

This week’s unfortunate incident in Pennsylvania is no different. The rural community there thought that Rapp’s coming-of-age novel wasn’t appropriate, just as rural communities here in Kansas thought the same of “We All Fall Down,” “Annie On My Mind,” The Giver” and countless others.

But these last few rounds of banned books feels different. The whole thing reeks of Big Politics in America — and hiding just behind that, Big Religion.

See, when books had been banned in the past, the banning body would list a few words they didn’t like, gather a group to complain, and get the book pulled for a year or so, before the issue dried up and went away. In almost every notable case, books found their way back onto shelves in schools and libraries.

But now, the attacks have a different perspective: that the words and, moreover, the ideas in these books are simply unnecessary parts of American life: That the speech in banned books is worthless, and not protected by the first amendment.

“If the parties’ intention is to deny students access to ideas with which the party disagrees, it is a violation of the First Amendment,” writes Claire Mullally, an intellectual-property lawyer who writes columns on book banning for the First Amendment Center.

The Supreme Court agrees with Mullally, but conservative teachers, parents and librarians don’t seem to care much. And as the gulf between liberalism and religious conservatism widens, those wanting to ban books because of their words and ideas suddenly have a voice—and a microphone.

“Parents who dare to speak up when their children are assaulted with sexually explicit and violent material are not ‘censors’—and most definitely not […]‘threats to intellectual freedom’.” Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy for Focus on the Family, a conservative watchdog group, said in a statement.

Focus on the Family has done a fine job, in both activism and advocacy, of likening any sentiment they don’t want to hear or read to “hard-core pornography,” something they claim national library associations feverishly support.

A powerful sentiment, to be certain. And their message is spreading, giving conservative parents and teachers the green light to pull books off of school library shelves at their whim, all while using the fear of pornography to justify their degradation of the First Amendment.

“If this type of book is in our school, then why not have Hustler and Penthouse in the school library?” Pennsylvania school board member Otto W. Voit III said to the AP about Rapp’s book.

Exactly, Mr. Voit. I’m know parents all over Muhlenberg are smitten that you made the connection between Rapp’s book and porno. Because if you hadn’t, they might be left with the mistaken idea that they were just words on a page…

Now, assuredly, parents are scared silly. “Oh my,” they must be thinking. “If we don’t act, our kids will be reading Penthouse at school, during study hall!”

Okay, it seems foolish to think reasonable parents and teacher believe what Mr. Voit said. But it must be having some effect, or else Minnery and his cronies wouldn’t bother saying it.

If the effect is fear, it may not be the actual goal. For conservative morality to flourish in any society, children must build its foundation.

“Book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children’s lives,” wrote Judy Blume, a popular children’s author, in an anti-censorship project for Random House. “This fear is often disguised as moral outrage.”

And Minnery’s outrage isn’t just moral, it’s social. How dare our society even have books with these words and ideas in them, his group seems to be saying.

But the fabric of the First Amendment is woven with the voices, words and ideas of a democracy. Unfortunately for Minnery and other conservatives, that means ideas that they might not like or find comfortable.

And if some parents don’t want their child reading certain books, fine by me. But freedom of speech and expression are not choices one parent or teacher can make for everyone in a group.

Because that’s not democracy. Maybe parents should spend a little less time on witch-hunts for books and more time teaching our kids what makes democracy work.

Knox is a Kansas City, Mo., senior in journalism