This is creepily similar to Russia circa 10+ years ago with its "gay propaganda" and "child protection" laws, and strong government support for the church.
MAGA is just United Russia with a different supreme leader. The end-game is the same - a vaguely lipservice-Christian[1] autocracy.
When they tell you of all the insane shit they want, believe them. They are an existential threat to the republic, because they don't place any value any of the immutable principles of the republic, and will sell all of them up the river to see their guy win.
---
[1] Their actual behavior is incredibly un-Christ-like.
It’s honestly terrifying that efforts to ban books and restrict what teachers can teach have made such a big comeback in the US. When I was in school, we always discussed banned books from the perspective of “we used to ban things that made people uncomfortable in the bad old days, but that could never happen in the 21st century”. Obviously that glossed over a lot of nuance, but it still shocks me as an adult seeing repression we discussed only from a historical perspective make its way back into the legislature.
Part of the purpose of education is exposing students to strange, uncomfortable, and even frightening ideas and giving them the tools to critically think about and even empathize with such ideas. They don’t have to even be “useful” ideas, since it’s important that students are given the tools to grow and become anything they want. It seems like a lot of groups around the country just want students to grow up to become drones working to prop up the economy. Anything that might make people question the nature of society or their role in it must be suppressed according to them.
A lot of your argument presupposes a distinct lack of parental authority in the education of a child.
The way that it appears to be playing out is that parents were repulsed by perverted and strange worldviews being taught to their children on their dime. They called their legislators to make the changes and, in a rare event, the legislators listened and are acting upon it.
The system, for once, seems to be working. Both sides should see the objective value in at least that.
> The way that it appears to be playing out is that parents were repulsed by perverted and strange worldviews being taught to their children on their dime.
This variation of the origin story gets a lot of play. However it doesn't address the outside book-ban groups who provide titles to parents - or who just appear at school board meetings themselves.
Eleven "super requesters" — those who raised concerns about or challenged
15 or more titles at a time — accounted for 73% of the targeted books.
They often referred to lists of books originating in other districts
or from online forums. Some had no children in the district.
In nearly 60 cases, the school district didn’t own the book
the requester sought to remove.
I struggle with the federal government's power over all this. Let the states and local jurisdictions decide. Put in guardrails so that those local jurisdictions don't become corrupted, but at the same time we should empower people to place their children in education systems that don't ultimately falter to who's empowered in the fed.
You may be okay with your children reading some books. That's great, and you should be able to find the right school districts for them, and I should be able to do the same to ensure my children don't read through explicit material without any form of parental oversight.
> I struggle with the federal government's power over all this.
From the TFA, the proposed bill "would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting use of funds under the act". This is hardly a case of the federal government running roughshod over sates and local jurisdictions.
This is a wild exaggeration to call this a national book ban.
"Federal funding" is a misnomer. All of the funding comes from the taxpayers, and they're the same taxpayers. So when the federal government takes your money and then says "you can only have it back if you do X" they are not actually funding something, they are imposing a fine for not doing it.
> It’s honestly terrifying that efforts to ban books and restrict what teachers can teach have made such a big comeback in the US. When I was in school, we always discussed banned books from the perspective of “we used to ban things that made people uncomfortable in the bad old days, but that could never happen in the 21st century”.
Except that's never gone away, and it was always happening, even when you were in school. For an obvious example: try teaching creationism in a public school and see what happens. That's more of a ban than any of these "book bans" anyone's been complaining about. On a more similar note, I don't think school libraries ever carried bodice-rippers or porno mags or all kinds of stuff, and if some librarian decided to try, the local school board would have uncontroversially have done something about it. Furthermore, they probably a lot had stuff that a 2026 liberal would look askance at (say books about owning and using guns).
This "book ban" framing is pure propaganda (dishonesty is common in politics). Communities have always made decisions about what belonged in schools and what didn't. The things that they decided wouldn't be available in school weren't banned, you just needed to get them outside of school (e.g. if you like bodice-rippers or porno mags go get them at the drug store of gas station down the street from the school).
We don’t teach creationism in school for the same reason we don’t teach the earth is flat: it’s a factually wrong, non-scientific idea. I don’t want someone telling my kids that the moon is made of cheese, nor do I want them lying that the earth is only 6,000 years old. That’s not censorship. That’s keeping science class scientific.
Why would there be an expectation that a public school would teach biblical nonsense? That's not censorship, it falls under a different high level principle of separating that from the state. It's also not censorship that schools don't teach pickpocketing. Stretching the word censorship doesn't make your case, it's transparently specious.
> Why would there be an expectation that a public school would teach biblical nonsense? That's not censorship, it falls under a different high level principle of separating that from the state. It's also not censorship that schools don't teach pickpocketing. Stretching the word censorship doesn't make your case, it's transparently specious.
Exactly, it's not censorship when you approve of the restriction, it's only censorship when you disapprove, and you've made up categories and divisions to obscure what you're really doing.
And that's what this is really about: jockeying between opposing groups to use power to determine what norms are taught in schools. And at least one side isn't being honest about what they're doing, and wraps their actions in soaring but false language.
Equating both of these things is dangerous and wrong. It’s not as if these are the same things. Creationism is factually provably wrong by all standards of modern science. Pretending that the position of “we ban teaching things that are known to be wrong” and the position that “we ban teaching things that are by modern standards correct, but uncomfortable to our world view” is a large part of the problem.
Age verification (porn bans), VPN bans, restrictions on 3D printing - all of these are other policies, both proposed and already in law, that make additional violations of individual rights easier to pass, because these things have been normalized. It’s why the slippery slope isn’t always a logical fallacy.
1. Ban exposing minors to "sexual material." Who would be against that? Surely only weirdos would push to expose kids to sex and pornography. Make sure this gets challenged in court and that it's found constitutional under 1A.
2. Define things we don't like as sexual material. Obviously being gay is entirely about sex, just like being trans is about genitals. You don't even have to speculate that this is the motive—it's defined explicitly in the bill.
3. Boom, you found a legal way to ban what would otherwise be a pretty obvious 1A violation.
This is the public institutions half, it's harder to swing a bill like this for private institutions which is why that's handled with age verification bills. That way it's not technically a ban.
Anyone who wants can look on archive.org to see a copy of Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer book, often cited as one of the "most banned" books out there. It is apparently intended for minors.
And it is pornographic, check page 168. Just far enough into the book so that any adult checking it first might not notice and permit it.
Finally, if I check the House bill, will I discover that instead of "banning books" it just insists that such books are restricted to adults at public libraries and only insofar as that public library receives grants from the feds?
That page (and the rest of the book) is far less pornographic than the actual porn I and many other kids I grew up with had access to, and regularly shared between ourselves, and is incredibly tame.
I also find it very telling that you'd consider what is on page 168 pornographic in the first place, sexually explicit maybe, but it is not intended to arouse or cause sexual excitement, it's meant to portray a lived experience.
The sexual repression in the United States is part of the reason why so many people grow up with the wrong ideas around sex and why teen pregnancy is such a big thing. Open discussion about these things (including gender and gender identity in that) is the best way to allow kids to grow up to be functional adults that are well informed and able to have critical thought about how and what they do and are far less likely to fall prey to predators and people who want to do them harm due to their lack of experience.
So totally cool if an atheist government came to power and started banning the Bible because of all the violence and rape depicted that’s in there (hey - it’s only if you take federal funding)? Or you’ll say it’s totally different because the stories about the Bible are how to be morale thus providing context? Context you conveniently omit from your example which covers all kinds of sexuality and how to navigate that with all the other romantic feelings. Children in my class btw regularly drew and wrote more obscene things.
Why do I feel like the people doing this for gay and trans materials would be the first to object people trying to apply it to religious texts?
Look, I asked when I was like 10 for a book and the library warned my dad it was intended for adults. I think the most he asked me was if I was sure / why I wanted to read the book but ultimately left it to me. Children picking their reading materials is critically important both as a skill of learning how to pick and how to deal and digest the content you encounter.
And here’s something uncomfortable. Unlike religious texts, which are forced onto children, no one was forcing kids to read this book. Kids were searching it out because they were curious about sexuality and trying to understand their feelings which means the age of those “kids” was probably 10+ when they were probably perfectly capable of processing these issues with the support of mature and rational adults. The problem as always are the adults in this situation who demand the rest of society “protect” their children from the ideas out there in world instead of raising resilient kids, which is an insane position honestly.
Finally, what about all the other books that aren’t like the one you pointed out? I feel like among the books gender queer is an exception in terms of explicitness and the real thread that connects the banned books is what they talk about, not how.
> And it is pornographic, check page 168. Just far enough into the book so that any adult checking it first might not notice and permit it.
Is your position that a proportionate response is a national book ban - to violate the 1A with a law that permanently, negatively impacts millions of Americans ?
you know, every time i see this book cited as the worst example of what the book banners want to ban, i check it out. Skimming to the "pornographic parts", i'm reminded just how repressed we are to find this repulsive. You should be uncomfortable when learning new things. Sexuality is not pornography. It's certainly more extreme than anything I was ever exposed to in my youth, but i'm sure this could have been massively helpful to a few kids in my high school, and probably de-stigmatizing for a few others. Certainly worth pissing off a few parents.
I realize I'm coming into a back-and-forth y'all are having, but how does this tie back to a normative claim of how things ought to work? It sounds like:
1. If I think what they say is bad for youths
2. And it seems the original author thought it would influence youths
3. Then it can be censored
Is that it? Because if so... well, I've got some bad news about the Bible! And that's not even getting into the issue of when the motives should stop mattering, or when the motives are made-up.
> prohibiting use of funds under the act “to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.
"For other purposes" is going to be doing a Herculean effort of carrying for the next few years if this passes. for example:
>This bill includes “lewd” and “lascivious” dancing as prohibited topics or themes.
I guess we learned nothing from Footloose.
----
And yes, for a TLDR on the article and the general situation of this the last decease or so: such book bans tends to be a roundabout way to associate "sexually oriented" topics with the trans community. Sometimes the entire LGBT umbrella is hit.
Pre-epstien, I'd be surprised that such people care much more about what goes on with a person's state of being than the person themselves. But it really seems like every accusation is a confession.
"Stop the Sexualization of Children Act" yeah right, because the biggest sexual threats to children are identity affirming books and not the paedophile sex trafficking networks run by the elites which have seen zero prosecutions in the US. At this point the US government is a total joke and laughing stock for the rest of the world.
You are either completely uneducated on world history or willfully ignorant.
There is no limit on how far back the clock is allowed to turn.
Things that will be targeted:
* homosexuals (often the first)
* non whites
* interracial marriage
* voting rights
* voting right for women
* women’s suffrage
* education for girls
* no fault divorce
* freedom of speech
* freedom of mobility (like to leave the country)
* trade unions / labor unions
* Freemasons (Oddfellows, etc)
* practicing a religion other than Christianity
* environmental regulations
* public lands, federal parks
* etc etc etc
Look not to China or North Korea for the operating model but East Germany during the Cold War. There was a massive surveillance operation in place then and technology has only improved.
Freedom is not guaranteed and for most of human history was not a goal.
Weimar Germany was very socially liberal, homosexuality was socially accepted, legal rights for women were the same as for men, and all of that definitely went away quite quickly.
> Sorry, the toothpaste doesn't go back into the tube with social issues. Interracial marriage isn't going away either lol.
Sorry, that's just naive, overconfident liberalism. There is no mandatory "direction" to social change. Given enough time, every bit of that toothpaste will go back in that tube, and enough more time it will come out again, only to go back in after a spell. And it won't be an oscillation. It'll be some weird path none of us can predict.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-ban...
When they tell you of all the insane shit they want, believe them. They are an existential threat to the republic, because they don't place any value any of the immutable principles of the republic, and will sell all of them up the river to see their guy win.
---
[1] Their actual behavior is incredibly un-Christ-like.
I hope they don't start a youth movement like the scouts and name it after their leader.
Part of the purpose of education is exposing students to strange, uncomfortable, and even frightening ideas and giving them the tools to critically think about and even empathize with such ideas. They don’t have to even be “useful” ideas, since it’s important that students are given the tools to grow and become anything they want. It seems like a lot of groups around the country just want students to grow up to become drones working to prop up the economy. Anything that might make people question the nature of society or their role in it must be suppressed according to them.
The way that it appears to be playing out is that parents were repulsed by perverted and strange worldviews being taught to their children on their dime. They called their legislators to make the changes and, in a rare event, the legislators listened and are acting upon it.
The system, for once, seems to be working. Both sides should see the objective value in at least that.
This variation of the origin story gets a lot of play. However it doesn't address the outside book-ban groups who provide titles to parents - or who just appear at school board meetings themselves.
ref: https://wisconsinwatch.org/2024/07/wisconsin-book-ban-school...Can you elaborate?
>The system, for once, seems to be working.
Interesting worldview.
You may be okay with your children reading some books. That's great, and you should be able to find the right school districts for them, and I should be able to do the same to ensure my children don't read through explicit material without any form of parental oversight.
From the TFA, the proposed bill "would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting use of funds under the act". This is hardly a case of the federal government running roughshod over sates and local jurisdictions.
This is a wild exaggeration to call this a national book ban.
Federal funding. States and districts are free to fund whatever they want.
Except that's never gone away, and it was always happening, even when you were in school. For an obvious example: try teaching creationism in a public school and see what happens. That's more of a ban than any of these "book bans" anyone's been complaining about. On a more similar note, I don't think school libraries ever carried bodice-rippers or porno mags or all kinds of stuff, and if some librarian decided to try, the local school board would have uncontroversially have done something about it. Furthermore, they probably a lot had stuff that a 2026 liberal would look askance at (say books about owning and using guns).
This "book ban" framing is pure propaganda (dishonesty is common in politics). Communities have always made decisions about what belonged in schools and what didn't. The things that they decided wouldn't be available in school weren't banned, you just needed to get them outside of school (e.g. if you like bodice-rippers or porno mags go get them at the drug store of gas station down the street from the school).
Exactly, it's not censorship when you approve of the restriction, it's only censorship when you disapprove, and you've made up categories and divisions to obscure what you're really doing.
And that's what this is really about: jockeying between opposing groups to use power to determine what norms are taught in schools. And at least one side isn't being honest about what they're doing, and wraps their actions in soaring but false language.
1. Ban exposing minors to "sexual material." Who would be against that? Surely only weirdos would push to expose kids to sex and pornography. Make sure this gets challenged in court and that it's found constitutional under 1A.
2. Define things we don't like as sexual material. Obviously being gay is entirely about sex, just like being trans is about genitals. You don't even have to speculate that this is the motive—it's defined explicitly in the bill.
3. Boom, you found a legal way to ban what would otherwise be a pretty obvious 1A violation.
This is the public institutions half, it's harder to swing a bill like this for private institutions which is why that's handled with age verification bills. That way it's not technically a ban.
And it is pornographic, check page 168. Just far enough into the book so that any adult checking it first might not notice and permit it.
Finally, if I check the House bill, will I discover that instead of "banning books" it just insists that such books are restricted to adults at public libraries and only insofar as that public library receives grants from the feds?
I also find it very telling that you'd consider what is on page 168 pornographic in the first place, sexually explicit maybe, but it is not intended to arouse or cause sexual excitement, it's meant to portray a lived experience.
The sexual repression in the United States is part of the reason why so many people grow up with the wrong ideas around sex and why teen pregnancy is such a big thing. Open discussion about these things (including gender and gender identity in that) is the best way to allow kids to grow up to be functional adults that are well informed and able to have critical thought about how and what they do and are far less likely to fall prey to predators and people who want to do them harm due to their lack of experience.
Why do I feel like the people doing this for gay and trans materials would be the first to object people trying to apply it to religious texts?
Look, I asked when I was like 10 for a book and the library warned my dad it was intended for adults. I think the most he asked me was if I was sure / why I wanted to read the book but ultimately left it to me. Children picking their reading materials is critically important both as a skill of learning how to pick and how to deal and digest the content you encounter.
And here’s something uncomfortable. Unlike religious texts, which are forced onto children, no one was forcing kids to read this book. Kids were searching it out because they were curious about sexuality and trying to understand their feelings which means the age of those “kids” was probably 10+ when they were probably perfectly capable of processing these issues with the support of mature and rational adults. The problem as always are the adults in this situation who demand the rest of society “protect” their children from the ideas out there in world instead of raising resilient kids, which is an insane position honestly.
Finally, what about all the other books that aren’t like the one you pointed out? I feel like among the books gender queer is an exception in terms of explicitness and the real thread that connects the banned books is what they talk about, not how.
There’s no need to be reading the bible, a comic book, a book about being gender queer, etc; when students can barely read to begin with.
Is your position that a proportionate response is a national book ban - to violate the 1A with a law that permanently, negatively impacts millions of Americans ?
You made that part up, and it is the operative part of your argument.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/29/schools-a...
So does the National Council of Teachers of English. https://ncte.org/teaching-maia-kobabe/
Just because can't believe that people would promote a comic with explicit texting and sexual imagery to children doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
1. If I think what they say is bad for youths
2. And it seems the original author thought it would influence youths
3. Then it can be censored
Is that it? Because if so... well, I've got some bad news about the Bible! And that's not even getting into the issue of when the motives should stop mattering, or when the motives are made-up.
"For other purposes" is going to be doing a Herculean effort of carrying for the next few years if this passes. for example:
>This bill includes “lewd” and “lascivious” dancing as prohibited topics or themes.
I guess we learned nothing from Footloose.
----
And yes, for a TLDR on the article and the general situation of this the last decease or so: such book bans tends to be a roundabout way to associate "sexually oriented" topics with the trans community. Sometimes the entire LGBT umbrella is hit.
Pre-epstien, I'd be surprised that such people care much more about what goes on with a person's state of being than the person themselves. But it really seems like every accusation is a confession.
Yup. When books get banned for containing actual sexual content, that gets reverted https://www.newsweek.com/bible-banned-texas-schools-over-sex...
It just depends how much the government wants to go fundamental and how much people allow it.
There is no limit on how far back the clock is allowed to turn.
Things that will be targeted:
* homosexuals (often the first)
* non whites
* interracial marriage
* voting rights
* voting right for women
* women’s suffrage
* education for girls
* no fault divorce
* freedom of speech
* freedom of mobility (like to leave the country)
* trade unions / labor unions
* Freemasons (Oddfellows, etc)
* practicing a religion other than Christianity
* environmental regulations
* public lands, federal parks
* etc etc etc
Look not to China or North Korea for the operating model but East Germany during the Cold War. There was a massive surveillance operation in place then and technology has only improved.
Freedom is not guaranteed and for most of human history was not a goal.
Sorry, that's just naive, overconfident liberalism. There is no mandatory "direction" to social change. Given enough time, every bit of that toothpaste will go back in that tube, and enough more time it will come out again, only to go back in after a spell. And it won't be an oscillation. It'll be some weird path none of us can predict.