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All of these books are freely available if you would like to spend your own money on them, as opposed to public funds.
by poplarsol 1y ago
All of these books are freely available if you would like to spend your own money on them, as opposed to public funds.
- epistasis 1y agoWhat does that point have to do anything? They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution. The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
- bigfishrunning 1y agoI think the problem with these laws is that they're too general. I think we can all agree that there are topics that should not be in elementary school libraries -- I don't think my 7 year old needs to be reading about oral sex for instance, regardless of the gender or sexuality of the participants. The real problem is the nature of the wording of "pornographic", which is poorly defined as "I know it when i see it", and stretched by disingenuous people with an agenda. As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
- fknorangesite 1y ago[flagged]
- bigfishrunning 1y agoThe point I'm trying to make is that panicing about book bans is not how you combat these bad-faith actors. It's defining rules to satiate their stated aims, and force them to bring their other motives to light, thus nullifying their arguments.
- UncleMeat 1y agoTheir stated aims are banning any visibility of trans people in all media.
- alistairSH 1y agoMy (completely inadequate) test... would the people banning books in FL (or wherever else) apply those same rules to the Bible? If not, they're not interested in protecting the children from explicit, but rather forcing their religious ideology on the rest of us.
- TimorousBestie 1y agoNo worries, the Bible is safe in Florida schools. https://www.christianpost.com/news/florida-school-board-votes-unanimously-to-keep-bible.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/florida-school-board-vote...
- epistasis 1y agoIn what way would you consider yourself an "absolutist" with views like these? It seems that free speech has quite a few limitations in your view.
- bigfishrunning 1y agoLet's take the opposite approach -- should schools stock back-issues of "Hustler" magazine? What about the "Anarchists Cookbook"? should we print it and put it on the shelf of a middle school? You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
- epistasis 1y agoI'm asking about "absolutist" and it's meaning. You replied with something different, about which books should or should not be in a school library. What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"? Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
- bigfishrunning 1y agoThere's a difference between allowing you to say something and hiring you to say it to my kids.
- epistasis 1y agoGot it, you have made that abundantly clear (and not that it matters but I agree.) Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"? I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
- bigfishrunning 1y agoYou are allowed to say absolutely whatever you want, Write it down, and sell that material without fear of repercussion. I don't know how to be more clear about this.
- wnoise 1y agoTopics? No, I don't agree with that. Almost any subject can be treated in an age-appropriate manner. A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library. For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration. I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
- Levitz 1y agoAren't public schools part of government? This looks like a bizarre state of affairs to me if the government can't regulate speech from the government. Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties. EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess: >A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment. >Judge Mendoza disagreed. >“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.” Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
- epistasis 1y agoStocking a book in a library is not speech from the government. If it were, we couldn't have religious books in school libraries, but we do.
- poplarsol 1y agoIf stocking a book is not speech then it is not a restriction on speech to decide not to stock a book.
- epistasis 1y agoAny individual decision, no. A systematic bias over many decisions could be a restriction on speech. (Edit: some systematic biases over the decisions are restrictions on speech that are unconstitutional, but not all.) A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
- lesuorac 1y agoPublic funds are our money. They are literally our tax dollars. Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
- bigfishrunning 1y agoPublic funds are your money, but also the money of those who don't agree with you.
- epistasis 1y agoOur constitution is the first agreement we have on how to settle any disagreement. It can be changed, it enough people agree.
- Cerium 1y agoThis is why I'm ok with the fact that the library has some books I like and agree with and many that I don't care about, and some I don't agree with.
- morkalork 1y agoA government cannot function if every person who doesn't like something gets veto on spending. Pick any topic and you'll be able to find half a dozen special interest groups against spending money on it.
- anigbrowl 1y agoThere's a large population in this country that are emphatically not Christian, but i've never seen any organized undertaking or even a serious proposal to get rid of Bible story books from school or public libraries. Occasionally you see people submitting the Bible to a list of books to be reviewed for removal, usually in response to the establishment of such a list by law or a school district.
- const_cast 1y agoI'm perfectly fine spending the money of people who don't agree with me.
- n4r9 1y ago> freely ... spend your own money Come on, now.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 1y agoThe amount of public money lost litigating the losing side of this lawsuit surely dwarfs the costs of the books involved? I say again, losing side, because this failed law was very clearly unconstitutional all along—the proponents went out of their way to transfer this taxpayer money to law firms, for a stunt.
- tremon 1y agoI think it's not a stunt but a strategy. They probably always planned to bring this case all the way to beef supreme court, so that they can neuter the First Amendment entirely.
- tstrimple 1y agoThey have been winning via attrition for decades. This shit is exhausting. If you ever stop paying attention, they'll fuck things up again.