[m00x]

So it's not really fair to say it's a ban. You can have the book at school, but the school library won't have it.

Would you agree for the school to have the book "The Passing of the Great Race", a famously racist and white supremacist book in your school library?

[UncleMeat]

Good things are good and bad things are bad.

I have absolutely no problem saying that bigots who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries are bad people while also thinking that The Turner Diaries shouldn't be in public schools.

[pfannkuchen]

> who insist that no books containing LGBT characters appear in libraries

Is this a common stance? I thought it was more like, no books glorifying LGBT lifestyle or teaching it as if it’s not controversial and it’s just a fact of life (as proponents sincerely believe, of course, not saying no one is thinks it is a fact of life, that’s just the part that is controversial). I understand disagreeing with that, but it isn’t the same as opponents pushing for zero gay/etc characters period, right?

I haven’t been following this topic too closely though so I might be missing what people are screeching about on the right today.

[UncleMeat]

My aunt is a Republican lobbyist. She believes that nobody is actually gay and that it is a mental illness where people are tricked into thinking it is possible to be gay and that this can originate from being exposed to gay people.

She has a bisexual daughter who has attempted suicide twice. She has told her daughter that she’d be better off dead than bi.

Also I’m very sorry if there are books that contain gay characters where there aren’t constant asides reminding the reader that these people are going to hell. The “gay lifestyle” is just gay people existing.

[LexiMax]

> glorifying LGBT lifestyle

What is an LGBT lifestyle?

My life before and after discovering the nature of my queerness is remarkably similar, though with a fair few more relationships and a lot less anguish afterwards.

[tavavex]

Weasel words like those are usually used by people to distance themselves from outright hatred of the people they dislike. "Oh, I don't hate you for being LGBT, I just hate and disagree with your lifestyle, which is something that you chose." See, totally different!

The implication of "lifestyle" usually being "ability to exist in a society without any major obstacles due to being LGBT", "ability to receive true healthcare related to being LGBT", "ability to be legally recognized and accommodated as a result of it" or "ability to express your queerness in public without being seen as the villain".

[pfannkuchen]

Not what I meant, thanks for the mind reading attempt though.

[UncleMeat]

Maybe then you can be much more specific about "books glorifying LGBT lifestyle", because you are using the same exact words as bigots who think that two gay people in a book being happy is the same as showing children hardcore pornography.

[pfannkuchen]

Can someone have a golf lifestyle? Like, they go to golf courses, they own golf clubs, they socialize with other golfers? I mean it in that sense. You seem defensive.

[LexiMax]

And this is what I find funny about the term "LGBT lifestyle." Most definitions of the term, including yours, could just as easily apply to cohorts of straight people if you just swap the gender of one of the subjects.

Imagine somebody getting upset for glorifying a straight lifestyle. Funny stuff.

[pfannkuchen]

I am just trying to actually understand why some people are upset. It seems wise for others to do the same, rather than simply dismiss the concerns. If the concerned are in the majority and they are dismissed consistently for years, then good luck to their opponents. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I just think most of society is regarded at this point and I feel like an alien trying to understand humans.

[giraffe_lady]

I don't know, I didn't come in here with particularly strong feelings about what "ban" means or should mean re books but people keep coming at me extremely hot for saying not much about it at all.

Personally I think using banned for "actively prevented from accessing in ways other books are not" makes plenty of sense even if you can effectively circumvent those attempts somehow.

The strict meaning that people seem to want to apply in here does not seem particularly useful to me. Almost no books have ever been banned by that standard, but there is a clearly organized movement in the US to remove all reference to queerness from public life. Flexible on nomenclature here but that context is very important.

[khaki54]

It may seem like an attack on queer books, but as far as I can tell none of the straight books seem to be trying to explain how minors should get access to adult dating apps to meet older men, or showing obscene graphical depictions of sodomy involving children.

I think if librarians were buying "straight" books with the same explicit and adult content and putting them in elementary, middle, and high schools, the same parents would be complaining about those too.

[gumby271]

The hell kind of library are you visiting?

[jkestner]

What queer book with that content was in libraries?

[LexiMax]

I suspect that whatever example they had in mind, it's a passage that is descriptive of someone's personal experience while not being prescriptive in telling the reader step-by-step how to follow in their footsteps.

[macintux]

For high school students, sure. I'd be very uncomfortable, but know thy enemy.

[antonymoose]

In my state (South Carolina) this is exactly how they handled it. If a parent or activist wishes see a book banned it goes through reviewed based on school-level appropriateness. A book like The Kite Runner with its deprecations of Bacha Bazi are a bit rough for a 5th grader but considered acceptable for a High Schooler given the cultural significance of the work.

[everybodyknows]

As cryptically referred to by the villain in the perhaps most famous of American novels. Credit Wikipedia:

> Grant became a part of popular culture in 1920s America. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald made a lightly disguised reference to Grant in The Great Gatsby. In the book, the character Tom Buchanan reads a book called The Rise of the Colored Empires by "this man Goddard", a combination of Grant and his colleague Lothrop Stoddard. ...

> ... "Everybody ought to read it", the character said. "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

[mcphage]

Is it currently there now?

[jfindper]

>You can have the book at school, but the school library won't have it.

False.