https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-ban...
When they tell you of all the insane shit they want, believe them. They are an existential threat to the republic, because they don't place any value any of the immutable principles of the republic, and will sell all of them up the river to see their guy win.
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[1] Their actual behavior is incredibly un-Christ-like.
I hope they don't start a youth movement like the scouts and name it after their leader.
Still, there are several major differences one bieng the patriarch supporting Putin while the Catholic church mostly opposes Trump.
Russian Orthodoxy, on the other hand, encompasses ~95% of Russian Christians, and there is no organized alternative to it.
Children do not have the full set of adult rights.
Part of the purpose of education is exposing students to strange, uncomfortable, and even frightening ideas and giving them the tools to critically think about and even empathize with such ideas. They don’t have to even be “useful” ideas, since it’s important that students are given the tools to grow and become anything they want. It seems like a lot of groups around the country just want students to grow up to become drones working to prop up the economy. Anything that might make people question the nature of society or their role in it must be suppressed according to them.
In a lot of way, what we are witnessing in a counter movement swinging opposite to the heavy push for critical theory in the public sphere. Critical theory is not neutral. It is teleological in nature.
Schools have been a battle ground for decades I fear.
This variation of the origin story gets a lot of play. However it doesn't address the outside book-ban groups who provide titles to parents - or who just appear at school board meetings themselves.
Eleven "super requesters" — those who raised concerns about or challenged
15 or more titles at a time — accounted for 73% of the targeted books.
They often referred to lists of books originating in other districts
or from online forums. Some had no children in the district.
In nearly 60 cases, the school district didn’t own the book
the requester sought to remove.
Can you elaborate?
>The system, for once, seems to be working.
Interesting worldview.
Except that's never gone away, and it was always happening, even when you were in school. For an obvious example: try teaching creationism in a public school and see what happens. That's more of a ban than any of these "book bans" anyone's been complaining about. On a more similar note, I don't think school libraries ever carried bodice-rippers or porno mags or all kinds of stuff, and if some librarian decided to try, the local school board would have uncontroversially have done something about it. Furthermore, they probably a lot had stuff that a 2026 liberal would look askance at (say books about owning and using guns).
This "book ban" framing is pure propaganda (dishonesty is common in politics). Communities have always made decisions about what belonged in schools and what didn't. The things that they decided wouldn't be available in school weren't banned, you just needed to get them outside of school (e.g. if you like bodice-rippers or porno mags go get them at the drug store of gas station down the street from the school).
Exactly, it's not censorship when you approve of the restriction, it's only censorship when you disapprove, and you've made up categories and divisions to obscure what you're really doing.
And that's what this is really about: jockeying between opposing groups to use power to determine what norms are taught in schools. And at least one side isn't being honest about what they're doing, and wraps their actions in soaring but false language.
What's really going on is you seem so caught up in your own biases that you can't even see what you're doing.
> Creationism is factually provably wrong by all standards of modern science. Pretending that the position of “we ban teaching things that are known to be wrong”
Do you really think the reason teaching creationism in American public schools is banned is because it's "factually provably wrong by all standards of modern science?"
I kinda get the impression you may be someone who has a hard time distinguishing between your subjective view and objectivity. This controversy isn't in any way shape or form about "book bans," it's really about the political decision about whose subjective view will prevail in schools. But at least one side won't admit that, because there's power in gaslighting people and power in mischaracterizing things to hit certain buttons. Regardless of who wins, the same types of "curation" activities will occur in school libraries.
You may be okay with your children reading some books. That's great, and you should be able to find the right school districts for them, and I should be able to do the same to ensure my children don't read through explicit material without any form of parental oversight.
From the TFA, the proposed bill "would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting use of funds under the act". This is hardly a case of the federal government running roughshod over sates and local jurisdictions.
This is a wild exaggeration to call this a national book ban.
Federal funding. States and districts are free to fund whatever they want.
You can argue about whether imposing a financial disincentive on working is a good or bad policy but there isn't really any case to be made for it not being what they're doing.
1. Ban exposing minors to "sexual material." Who would be against that? Surely only weirdos would push to expose kids to sex and pornography. Make sure this gets challenged in court and that it's found constitutional under 1A.
2. Define things we don't like as sexual material. Obviously being gay is entirely about sex, just like being trans is about genitals. You don't even have to speculate that this is the motive—it's defined explicitly in the bill.
3. Boom, you found a legal way to ban what would otherwise be a pretty obvious 1A violation.
This is the public institutions half, it's harder to swing a bill like this for private institutions which is why that's handled with age verification bills. That way it's not technically a ban.
And it is pornographic, check page 168. Just far enough into the book so that any adult checking it first might not notice and permit it.
Finally, if I check the House bill, will I discover that instead of "banning books" it just insists that such books are restricted to adults at public libraries and only insofar as that public library receives grants from the feds?
I also find it very telling that you'd consider what is on page 168 pornographic in the first place, sexually explicit maybe, but it is not intended to arouse or cause sexual excitement, it's meant to portray a lived experience.
The sexual repression in the United States is part of the reason why so many people grow up with the wrong ideas around sex and why teen pregnancy is such a big thing. Open discussion about these things (including gender and gender identity in that) is the best way to allow kids to grow up to be functional adults that are well informed and able to have critical thought about how and what they do and are far less likely to fall prey to predators and people who want to do them harm due to their lack of experience.
Why do I feel like the people doing this for gay and trans materials would be the first to object people trying to apply it to religious texts?
Look, I asked when I was like 10 for a book and the library warned my dad it was intended for adults. I think the most he asked me was if I was sure / why I wanted to read the book but ultimately left it to me. Children picking their reading materials is critically important both as a skill of learning how to pick and how to deal and digest the content you encounter.
And here’s something uncomfortable. Unlike religious texts, which are forced onto children, no one was forcing kids to read this book. Kids were searching it out because they were curious about sexuality and trying to understand their feelings which means the age of those “kids” was probably 10+ when they were probably perfectly capable of processing these issues with the support of mature and rational adults. The problem as always are the adults in this situation who demand the rest of society “protect” their children from the ideas out there in world instead of raising resilient kids, which is an insane position honestly.
Finally, what about all the other books that aren’t like the one you pointed out? I feel like among the books gender queer is an exception in terms of explicitness and the real thread that connects the banned books is what they talk about, not how.
There’s no need to be reading the bible, a comic book, a book about being gender queer, etc; when students can barely read to begin with.
Libraries today carry the Bible. Libraries, as non profits, also get grants from various entities including local, state, and federal governments. So then is the argument we should we then ban all government funding for libraries? I’m going to assume your response is to say “no, just don’t use federal dollars for this stuff” although it’s not wild of someone of your presumed political persuasion to also be in favor of this option. Is that easy though? It’s not like there’s a magical fairy that attributes “book A was purchased from this funding stream and book B from this other”. “No no” I can hear you saying. You do this with block grants - that solves the mixing problem. Except it doesn’t - I have pool A of money from the federal government and pool B from some other source. I normally might use A and B equally to buy some books but now I just buy the banned books from B and A to by the rest. So now I’m not using federal dollars but I’m still buying all the same books with the same input stream of money. If you’re literate you understand this is the exact same problem we have with “this tax or penalty or whatever will be used to fund schools” which is meaningless because they just then decrease the school funding by that new revenue amount, thus effectively funneling it into the general fund.
> There’s no need to be reading the bible, a comic book, a book about being gender queer, etc; when students can barely read to begin with.
If you're talking about “can barely” read it’s important to be precise about what you mean because excluding the pandemic, scores have been pretty constant over the past 20 years. And by the way, reading different texts with different subject matters with different ways of understanding and interpreting the subject matter is precisely important for developing reading skills.
But you’re right - for those in this thread who are struggling with basic reading and critical thinking skills to understand the points people make in the comments, maybe we should recommend them some starting materials.
Is your position that a proportionate response is a national book ban - to violate the 1A with a law that permanently, negatively impacts millions of Americans ?
As far as gender and sexuality specifically, nearly every aspect of what I did and said was analyzed and judged as "gay" or "not gay" by my guardians, gay also serving as a proxy for non-masculinity... and thus I could not for example have long hair (as apparently only gay men have long hair, and routinely pointing out that Jesus himself had long hair frequently led to punishment or physical abuse). From music taste to choice in friends to choice in language or books, to how I dressed.
In fact, I was told that men are never supposed to cry or show weakness, and my grandfather would quite literally beat the living shit out of me on a very frequent basis from the age of five, savagely beating me with metal objects and whips and belts, anything he could get his hands on, proclaiming that I would continue to get beaten until I stopped crying and took it "like a man". This was a routine part of my cult training as a child, getting beaten until my insides were dried out from crying and I physically could not cry anymore; until my diaphragm was convulsing from the pain. If I'd been found with a book like Kobabe's Gender Queer, I probably would have been put in the hospital.
I wouldn't wish my experience on the most evil of men. I absolutely understand why many who experienced gender violence in their youth simply decide to leave the entire concept of gender behind. Personally however, my path has been to unapologetically be myself and help other young men understand that they can embrace and define masculinity in whichever way they choose. To take back the reigns of masculinity from violent, sexually represeed psychopaths. The number of pissed off parents racked up along the way is just a measure of my success in this endeavor.
You made that part up, and it is the operative part of your argument.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/29/schools-a...
So does the National Council of Teachers of English. https://ncte.org/teaching-maia-kobabe/
Just because can't believe that people would promote a comic with explicit texting and sexual imagery to children doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
1. If I think what they say is bad for youths
2. And it seems the original author thought it would influence youths in the way I don't like
3. Then it can be censored
Is that it? Because if so... well, I've got some bad news about the Bible, and that's not even getting into the trustworthiness of the agency making determination 1 and 2.
"For other purposes" is going to be doing a Herculean effort of carrying for the next few years if this passes. for example:
>This bill includes “lewd” and “lascivious” dancing as prohibited topics or themes.
I guess we learned nothing from Footloose.
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And yes, for a TLDR on the article and the general situation of this the last decease or so: such book bans tends to be a roundabout way to associate "sexually oriented" topics with the trans community. Sometimes the entire LGBT umbrella is hit.
Pre-epstien, I'd be surprised that such people care much more about what goes on with a person's state of being than the person themselves. But it really seems like every accusation is a confession.
Yup. When books get banned for containing actual sexual content, that gets reverted https://www.newsweek.com/bible-banned-texas-schools-over-sex...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Miller_(politician)#:~:te...
And if you think I'm kidding, no I'm not.
Some of those boys end up with herpes, but it's all fine in MAGA land.
Source, straight from the horses mouth: https://youtu.be/KolvU5m0CZI?si=KMnq_y8KfGuhXkDY&t=410
> so this shouldn't have any affect on anything.
What specific language in this law leads you to believe this is a reasonable conclusion?
It just depends how much the government wants to go fundamental and how much people allow it.
Can you elaborate on how you think these two things are comparable?
The former is "tax dollars can't be spent on books that depict certain content". The latter is "a revolution lead by Islamic theocrats installs a brutally repressive islamist regime that transformed an otherwise western country into a hellscape". You think these things are the same?
> Interracial marriage isn't going away either
But more generally, all those little book bans in various forms, explicit anti-diversity and xenophobic rules, undermining the right to vote for the specific groups of citizens, etc. add up and point in a specific direction. There are quite a few popular people who would be up for a theocracy, and a lot of openly fascist people down with the brutally repressive part. Consider how the sexual content in the Bible doesn't normally get included in those laws - like it's not the sexual content that's actually the target here...
Nothing happens out of nowhere. We're at "concentration camps are accepted by many people" level at the moment. The direction of government is obvious, the speed and possible success are still up for debate.
There is no limit on how far back the clock is allowed to turn.
Things that will be targeted:
* homosexuals (often the first)
* non whites
* interracial marriage
* voting rights
* voting right for women
* women’s suffrage
* education for girls
* no fault divorce
* freedom of speech
* freedom of mobility (like to leave the country)
* trade unions / labor unions
* Freemasons (Oddfellows, etc)
* practicing a religion other than Christianity
* environmental regulations
* public lands, federal parks
* etc etc etc
Look not to China or North Korea for the operating model but East Germany during the Cold War. There was a massive surveillance operation in place then and technology has only improved.
Freedom is not guaranteed and for most of human history was not a goal.
Sorry, that's just naive, overconfident liberalism. There is no mandatory "direction" to social change. Given enough time, every bit of that toothpaste will go back in that tube, and enough more time it will come out again, only to go back in after a spell. And it won't be an oscillation. It'll be some weird path none of us can predict.
Adult books are for adults.
Somehow, the kids were just fine.