Banning books in schools (1 Viewer)

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    Optimus Prime

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    Excellent article I thought deserved its own thread
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    On the surface, it would appear that book censors and censored authors like myself can agree on one thing: Books are powerful.

    Particularly books for children and teens.

    Why else would people like me spend so much time and energy writing them?

    Why else would censors spend so much time and energy trying to keep them out of kids’ hands?

    In a country where the average adult is reading fewer and fewer books, it’s a surprise to find Americans arguing so much about them.

    In this election year, parents and politicians — so many politicians — are jumping into the fray to say how powerful books can be.

    Granted, politicians often make what I do sound like witchcraft, but I take this as a compliment.

    I’ll admit, one of my first thoughts about the current wildfire of attempted censorship was: How quaint.

    Conservatives seemed to be dusting off their playbook from 1958, when the only way our stories could get to kids was through schools and libraries.

    While both are still crucial sanctuaries for readers, they’re hardly the only options. Plenty of booksellers supply titles that are taken off school shelves.

    And words can be very widely shared free of charge on social media and the rest of the internet. If you take my book off a shelf, you keep it away from that shelf, but you hardly keep it away from readers.

    As censorship wars have raged in so many communities, damaging the lives of countless teachers, librarians, parents and children, it’s begun to feel less and less quaint.

    This is not your father’s book censorship…..

    Here’s something I never thought I’d be nostalgic for: sincere censors. When my first novel, “Boy Meets Boy,” was published in 2003, it was immediately the subject of many challenges, some of which kept the book from ever getting on a shelf in the first place.

    At the time, a challenge usually meant one parent trying to get a book pulled from a school or a library, going through a formal process.

    I often reminded myself to try to find some sympathy for these parents; yes, they were wrong, and their desire to control what other people in the community got to read was wrong — but more often than not, the challenge was coming from fear of a changing world, a genuine (if incorrect) belief that being gay would lead kids straight to ruination and hell, and/or the misbegotten notion that if all the books that challenged the (homophobic, racist) status quo went away, then the status quo would remain intact.

    It was, in some ways, as personal to them as it was to those of us on the other side of the challenge.

    And nine times out of 10, the book would remain on the shelf.

    It’s not like that now. What I’ve come to believe, as I’ve talked to authors and librarians and teachers, is that attacks are less and less about the actual books.

    We’re being used as targets in a much larger proxy war.

    The goal of that war isn’t just to curtail intellectual freedom but to eviscerate the public education system in this country.

    Censors are scorching the earth, without care for how many kids get burned.

    Racism and homophobia are still very much present, but it’s also a power grab, a money grab. The goal for many is a for-profit, more authoritarian and much less diverse culture, one in which truth is whatever you’re told it is, your identity is determined by its acceptability and the past is a lie that the future is forced to emulate.

    The politicians who holler and post and draw up their lists of “harmful” books aren’t actually scared of our books.

    They are using our books to scare people.

     
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    I don’t think reading books is generally going to cause sexual issues, no. Not books like 50 Shades of Gray, anyway. Videos and pictures are different.

    There probably are some books that could cause issues, though, in some children. That’s why parental rights is more important than some nut case trying to ban books about Wilma Rudolph and Anne Frank.

    You want to pretend it’s about pornography when it is about controlling other people’s children. Hence the bans of completely innocuous books.
    "innocuous books"

     
    SFL: I gave examples of what I consider to be innocuous books. In that very post. Why do you ignore that, and post a senator reading sexually explicit material?

    You are becoming extremely disingenuous.

    Why should Wilma Rudolph’s autobiography and the Diary of Anne Frank be censored? Answer that please.
     
    Why can’t we have this type of system? We had a similar one where I grew up - except the librarians kept the books up at the front desk and you had to ask for them.

    Why do we have objections to Wilma Rudolph’s life story in her own words? And the Diary of Anne Frank? And picture books of families which have zero words - just pictures of a variety of families? And books about two penguins who bonded at a zoo and raised some chicks together?

    We have entertained countless questions about pornography and have tried to answer them forthrightly. But we get crickets when we ask about actual books that are being removed from shelves.

     
    Why can’t we have this type of system? We had a similar one where I grew up - except the librarians kept the books up at the front desk and you had to ask for them.
    because its not about keeping kids from reading those books its about controlling children's thoughts. cant have them thinking about being gay. also about controlling others cause you know my wants are more important then yours.
     
    the trickle down effects of these idiots are being seen locally.
    Ascension Parish announced they were building a new library and l the comments about it is just full of that redneck butt hurt snowflake commentary full of hate.. sad really. they are now anti-library..
     
    SFL: I gave examples of what I consider to be innocuous books. In that very post. Why do you ignore that, and post a senator reading sexually explicit material?

    You are becoming extremely disingenuous.

    Why should Wilma Rudolph’s autobiography and the Diary of Anne Frank be censored? Answer that please.
    I can't imagine.
     
    I appreciate you guys telling me why you think Farb and SFL support book bans. I want to hear them tell me why though. And why specifically the books that I’m mentioning in this thread, because the vast majority of book bans are these types of books.
     
    They aren't going to admit to hating what they don't understand or know.

    That is ignorance.

    Couple that with their Incel level projection and it's no secret why they hate being shown their reflection worse than anything.
     
    The federal government needs to get involved and stop this. They can't continue to let this government censorship go on.

    I think certainly this can be challenged in federal court on First Amendment grounds. I’m not sure the federal government itself will get involved - I’m not sure what they can do apart from perhaps DOJ civil rights division bringing legal action. I think DOJ would much prefer that be done by private plaintiffs.
     
    I think certainly this can be challenged in federal court on First Amendment grounds. I’m not sure the federal government itself will get involved - I’m not sure what they can do apart from perhaps DOJ civil rights division bringing legal action. I think DOJ would much prefer that be done by private plaintiffs.

    I think the Department of Education and DOJ have a lot actions at their disposable they can take to stop this. The can look at school and district certifications and funding and tie it to preventing this censorship. They can bring civil right legal actions for the protection of LGBTQ+ students. They can start talking about this and the harm that it is doing to students. They have a responsibility to stop this, it shouldn't just be left to private citizens to stop this erasure of a whole group of people.
     
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    I think the Department of Education and DOJ have a lot actions at their disposable they can take to stop this. The can look at school and district certifications and funding and tie it to preventing this censorship. They can bring civil right legal actions for the protection of LGBTQ+ students. They can start talking about this and the harm that it is doing to students. They have a responsibility to stop this, it shouldn't just be left to private citizens to stop this erasure of a whole group of people.

    I don’t know if those things are true - I don’t think the federal Dept. of Ed does school and district certifications and they can’t create funding restrictions that aren’t already there in the programmatic authority. It may also be most harmful to the district’s most at-risk students to start pulling funding over a library content dispute. Just saying there’s probably a lot more to it than presuming the Dept. of Ed. has a lot of real leverage that it can lawfully exert.

    Certainly DOJ’s civil rights division has authority to bring action based on Title IV of the CRA which includes coverage for LGBT. I’d be really surprised if they didn’t have an active case on this but I also think they would prefer to see if other avenues pan out - yes it’s clearly discriminatory but it’s also ultimately a library content case. I think DOJ may be sensitive to not want to get into the business of enforcing the CRA based on what books are banned at the local school library level - it’s a substantial exercise of federal power into something that is classically local. But nonetheless, if it violates federal civil rights law (it certainly appears to), there’s a basis and they may decide they must intervene. I don’t know, I just don’t think it’s as simple as it may seem for federal intervention.
     

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