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

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

#81

Post by Avshalom »

remarkEon wrote: post #66
prasadjoglekar wrote: post #42

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…

>(in some cases pornographic)

so what was going on in all those other cases?

>they'll try to remove it from the [everywhere else] too"

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/05/gop-lawmaker-petitions-c...

hey look they've already started escalating. Now, that one got dismissed but yeah, your "steelman" is not in fact "silly"

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

#82

Post by red-iron-pine »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #31
izzydata wrote: post #18

If they are willing to go to such extremes to censor books how do they feel about the internet? The internet has a reach that is orders of magnitude greater than books, but I never hear about lawmakers attempting to shut down the internet or part of the internet. Is it just too decentralized to even attempt or is their pursuit of book censorship just for show to impress their followers?

Generally if you are out-of-touch enough to think libraries are important facets of societal knowledge that require sexual policing rather than a book warehouse with free wifi than you are out-of-touch enough to think the internet only consists of Facebook and google searches to Facebook

there are well establish web blocking & policing tools. most libraries use them.

and most of the people there to use the internet don't have access to the web on their own -- they're not going to be the most internet savvy users.

it's not impossible for Jim-Bob the toothless iterant to get to the Pronz on library computer -- i'm sure it happens, in much the same way i'm sure it happens on school computer lab systems -- but it is certainly the minority.

tbh i'd be more worried about doomscrollers and kids playing online games burning bandwidth and bogarting the systems

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

#83

Post by yamtaddle »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #42
izzydata wrote: post #18

If they are willing to go to such extremes to censor books how do they feel about the internet? The internet has a reach that is orders of magnitude greater than books, but I never hear about lawmakers attempting to shut down the internet or part of the internet. Is it just too decentralized to even attempt or is their pursuit of book censorship just for show to impress their followers?

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.

Sure—and, traditionally, local school boards have dealt with all that just fine. Which, given the fraction of funding that comes from local property taxes in most districts, seems appropriate to me.

This is big government stepping in to override decisions of local governments that they disagree with.

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

#84

Post by tzs »

zdragnar wrote: post #60
barbazoo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the material that was available in school libraries shocked even me as a gay man. Here are two pages from a book (Gender Queer) that caused a bunch of this controversy: > (Caution: these links might be NSFW, but they are blurred) > https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Screen... > https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Screen... > If a parent wanted to give this book to their…

> No sane educator or library person... That's the problem: https://www.wlky.com/article/gender-queer-book-louisville-jc... https://foxchattanooga.com/news/nation-world/high-school-lib... https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2022/05/10/lgbtq-me... https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclu... https://wgme.com/news/local/turner-community-members-weigh-i... There's plenty more, and even more that…

>> No sane educator or library person would offer that to a young child.

Those seem to all be about high school libraries.

My recollection of high school is that by the time we reached it we'd seen far more than what's in that book, and we wouldn't have thought the book was a big deal.

But maybe it is different in high school nowadays. We didn't have the internet. Maybe kids now have such an overwhelmingly amount of wholesome entertainment via the internet that by the time they reach high school they have yet to get around to looking at sex stuff, so it would be a big shock to them?

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

#86

Post by thwayunion »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #28

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…

Then you're okay with the status quo and can ignore the ongoing moral panic about school libraries. The books that people are flipping shit about are not currently and never have been available in elementary school libraries. Also, almost all non-high-school libraries are curated for age appropriateness already. I'm sure someone will be able to dig up the one exception that proves the rule, but 99.9999% of the frothing-at-the-mouth articles about school libraries that you will find online or on cable news are about high schools.

Or, in the case of this article, about public, non-school libraries.

(I guess an elementary school kid or middle school kid could order a book via the inter-library loan system, but that's sort of a stupid caveat since typing pornhub.com into a smartphone or desktop browser is several orders of magnitude easier than knowing about and learning how to use the ILL system.)

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

#87

Post by e40 »

izzydata wrote: post #18

If they are willing to go to such extremes to censor books how do they feel about the internet? The internet has a reach that is orders of magnitude greater than books, but I never hear about lawmakers attempting to shut down the internet or part of the internet. Is it just too decentralized to even attempt or is their pursuit of book censorship just for show to impress their followers?

The book bans are clearly step 1 in a long list of steps.

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

#88

Post by anigbrowl »

dannyobrien wrote: post #56
atoav wrote: post #8

As a european that frequently discusses political topics with people from the US, I recall times when conservatives over there were all about "small government" and "freedom of speech" and how they would literally fight for those rights (that's what the second amendment was written for in their eyes). Where are those people today? Why are they not more vocal? Or were these values always just a veneer for something el…

Not that I'd agree with them, but I don't see the inconsistency: cutting funding of libraries is smaller government. The question of whether school book bans violates the First Amendment is a contested one, and has some interplay with the current pushes on left and right to control what is available online. Basically, it revolves around whether you think determining what content is in a school library is censorship,…

cutting funding of libraries is smaller government

Not if the funds are just spent elsewhere.

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

#89

Post by yamtaddle »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #28

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 best argument that none of this fucking matters a bit is that local decision makers—many of them elected—are and have been doing an overall totally fine job of sorting this out, and that it wasn't a problem on anyone's radar until certain politically-aligned media outlets decided to start a moral panic to GOTV.

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

#90

Post by kimbernator »

The truth is that the assertion that elementary schools are trying to expose children to pornography is outright untrue, because of course it is. Conservatives have simply decided to equate that with allowing children to freely see same-sex relationships portrayed in the same way as opposite-sex relationships have been portrayed to them forever. It's a lie that only serves to divide people and try to convince them of the outdated notion that non-straight people are child abusers, and therefore that the republican party is the anti-child abuser party.

In the end, the only hope the republican party has to survive as the older generation passes is to rely on lies of this nature to divide enough people that vote based on moral outrage instead of fact.

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