[stctw]

> Banning books

I don't see how comments saying that are accepted here. Everyone knows that no books are being banned anywhere in the country. You can go to a bookstore or web site and buy whatever books you want. They can be bought in public or delivered to your home. Publishers can publish whatever they want. The First Amendment protects authors, publishers, and readers.

Meanwhile, in the UK, if you share a message consisting entirely of a couple of emojis on Facebook, you can be sentenced to 2 months in jail, being convicted and sentenced in merely 3 days.

Yet people here continue to make accusations of "banning books." I hope that the Internet enables humanity to eventually "graduate" out of this state in which we have infinite access to information yet consume enormous amounts of propaganda.

[dylan604]

> I don't see how comments saying that are accepted here

because they are true. "The district then banned 14 titles (bringing its total since 2021 to 30), including popular books by Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume"[0] i don't see how comments like yours are even made here, but at least they are not accepted.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/11/texas-library-book-b...

[digging]

Forcibly removing books (about very specific topics related to oppressed cultural minorities) from public school libraries is not the same thing as enacting a national ban on printing or trading those books, no.

But it's a lot closer to a total ban than it is to not banning books. (And I stand by "forcibly," if you've seen any of the adults screaming at school board hearings or issuing threats over these books)

[philwelch]

What’s really funny is that these books are usually so obscene that just reading from them at a school board meeting is a good way to get “forcibly” removed. A few stories:

> A speaker at a Florida school board meeting was removed for using vulgar language after reading aloud from a highly sexualized book available at the high school’s public library.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/florida-school-board-remove...

> Law enforcement escorted a man out of a local school board meeting in North Texas after he read from a book banned by the district earlier this summer. The clash comes as public school districts across Texas—including several in the Houston area—move to exclude titles deemed "obscene" in increasing numbers.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/texas-schoo...

> A Georgia school board member cut off a mother reading sexually explicit content from a book available to high school students in the district, saying the passage was "inappropriate" for any children to potentially hear.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/parent-reading-sexual-content-sch...

I frankly find it impossible to believe that anyone actually believes that literally any book should be allowed in a public school library. We can disagree about where to draw the line but I don’t think anybody wants copies of The Turner Diaries in a public school library.

It’s particularly hard to take these complaints seriously when they come from the same people who hold congressional hearings to attack a private business for selling certain books to grown adults: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/09/1035559330/democrats-slam-ama...

[openasocket]

Here’s a comprehensive list of books banned in Texa, school district by school district: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/list-of-texas-banned-boo... . On there you will find obscene books like “the Handmaid’s tale” and “the hobbit”

[consteval]

> What’s really funny is that these books are usually so obscene

This is not the case because literally hundreds of books have been, or are, on the chopping blocks.

Keep in mind the word "obscene" here is doing a lot of work. These types of people consider any display of homosexuality obscene. Their purpose is to mix in REAL obscene books into the pot to confuse you and get you to think "wow they're doing the lord's work!"

It's a common, but effective, strategy. You say a few reasonable things and then you mix in some absolutely crazy bullshit and it goes under the radar. Meaning, you ban actually absurd books and then you sneak in "The Handmaid's Tale" or "To Kill a Mockingbird" and hopefully nobody notices.

[gottorf]

> oppressed cultural minorities

What oppressed cultural minorities? Nearly the entirety of the media landscape outright celebrates LGBTQ, if that's what you're talking about. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more exaggerated use of the word "oppression".

Does the fact that you view this group as oppressed make a difference on whether such a ban is more or less valid?

[openasocket]

Off the top of my head: LGBTQ people are significantly more likely to be assaulted or murdered than the average population: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/07/11/violentvictimiz...

Also, Ken Paxton, the Texas AG, has publicly stated he would be in favor of Texas banning being gay again

[digging]

> I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more exaggerated use of the word "oppression".

How fortunate for you, and how exhausting for the rest of us, that you live in such a world.

You're telling me you haven't even heard of the drag bans popping up all over the country? That's queer culture, if you couldn't tell. (It's also, since you probably won't notice this right away, a veiled instrument for criminalizing trans people.)

[consteval]

> Does the fact that you view this group as oppressed make a difference on whether such a ban is more or less valid?

Well yes, because you won't ever see a ISD try to ban a book because it contains a heterosexual couple.

We can play dumb all day long, and sometimes that can be fun. But after a certain point we have to wade through the bullshit.

It's not about sexuality, it's not about protecting children, it's not about inappropriate content. When 100% of proposed book bans "conveniently" target books which, either tangentially or directly, address LGBT topics then clearly THAT is the reason they are being banned.

Of course, nobody is going to tell you that. Because saying "we want this book gone because gays" isn't very nice and doesn't sound very good. However, as human beings, we have been given the power of logic and deductive reasoning. We can look at patterns, locations, history of regions etc. and come to the conclusion that is what they're doing.

[vel0city]

Books are absolutely being banned from public libraries and schools in the US. There may not be laws preventing the private circulation of such books (yet...some are arguing bringing back the Comstock act for these works) but they certainly are being banned from certain settings.

[openasocket]

“Inside the two-year fight to bring charges against school librarians in Granbury, Texas” : https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna161444

That’s librarians at a school subjected to a two year criminal investigation, complete with search warrants and interrogations, because of the books that were on their shelves