Live data from Hacker News

Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

kansascity.com

71–80 of 132 posts

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#71
post #16

Does this law apply for students of all ages? Surely "sexually explicit" materials are a requirement for sexual education right? What am I missing?

You're missing that most of these people want to kill sexual education too. They are openly against modern education, and think the father of the household should have final say on anything and everything.

Somewhat off-topic, but the other day a school principal in Florida was forced out of a job because some parents were upset that their 6th-graders were exposed to an image of Michelangelo's David - in an art history class: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11894493/Tallahasse...

There's an overlap between these sort of hyper-reactionary people and politically motivated street toughs, who are likely to keep escalating such situations because it's strategically effective.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#73
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the answer lies in teaching kids (young adults?) in an objective, strictly-educational manner as the time dawns for it to become relevant in their lives. Of course that solution would be objected to by both sides. The social leftists think it's literally a death sentence to trans children to not teach 6-year-olds about anal sex, and populist conservatives think sex ed in any capacity is degenerate pedophilia.

> The social leftists think it's literally a death sentence to trans children to not teach 6-year-olds about anal sex Where... where has any leftist said that?

They'll dig up some random anonymous account on twitter as somehow representative of "the left".

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#74
All the more reason for zlibrary to exist, to work around silly local yokel politicians relegating their constituency to ignorance for their own agendas by book burnings. Good thing anyone can buy their way into politics, isn't it?

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#75
post #67
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The social leftists think it's literally a death sentence to trans children to not teach 6-year-olds about anal sex Where... where has any leftist said that?

Only the straw leftists that live rent free in these fascists' heads.

It's definitely some "enlightened centrist/all sides are the same" stuff there.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not censoring books; rather a state choosing which books to publicly fund in school libraries. No one is banning parents from buying those books on their own dime. Schools are publicly funded by taxes; those taxes are apportioned by elected representatives. The legislature has the right to dictate what the money can and can't be used for. That's not censorship.

What's been really jarring about this issue is that everyone is calling it a "book ban", when it demonstrably is not. It's removing certain (in some cases pornographic) material from school curricula and libraries. Maybe you can steelman an argument that goes something like "if they remove this from school curricula and libraries, they'll try to remove it from the [everywhere else] too". This is of course silly. Plus…

[deleted]

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#77

Where should the line be drawn? As a parent of kids in elementary and middle school, I don't want them reading about anything sexually explicit. Maybe in high school but I feel something should be done to evaluate what reading materials are seen by children. We didn't do it with social media, we didn't do it with pornography, and we bear the results of that nonintervention. What is the best argument for allowing elem…

The line should be drawn wherever parents, teachers, and librarians choose to draw it. Politicians should not be involved. Top-down meddling has destroyed public education in USA, and this is just more of that. At some point we should stop making public schools worse.

Aren't politicians involved whenever the will of the voters is being enacted? What if most parents in MO support what the politicians are doing? What if they called their representatives and asked them to take action against libraries?

If you oppose top-down meddling in public education then I assume you support vouchers? That's about as bottom-up as things get.

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#78
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's your prerogative to actually parent your children and keep an eye on what they check out and what they're doing online. However, pushing your values onto the community at large because you're worried about your middle school child knowing what sex is. The books these conservatives want to ban aren't porn, they're complex stories about complex topics that your kids may have to deal with themselves. If you d…

This law in question (in MO) is very explicitly about porn. It does not apply to the text, but to images, and specifically exempts scientific and sex education material.

You think school libraries are currently stocking actual porn and this law was needed to prevent that?

Re: Missouri lawmakers move to strip library funding, retaliate for book ban lawsuit

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

These arguments are no different than when governments try to have backdoors installed in technology. They say it's about protecting the kids to make the new laws hard to argue against without looking like a monster, but in reality the laws are tools for them to do more nefarious things. If a politician ever uses "protecting the children" as a justification, that should be a huge alarm bell in your head that means you should really consider what arguments you would have against their suggestion if kids weren't involved.

Nobody was ever trying to show 1st graders sexually explicit material in libraries. This is a tool to suppress ideas about things like LGBTQ.

Why are you defending the bigots in charge of the state that wish to marginalize their fellow man?

Post reply on HN