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Better article here: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/new-rule-to-block-missouri-library-funding-set-to-go-into-effect-may-30/article_2f11c

Better article here: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/new-rule-to-block-missouri-library-funding-set-to-go-into-effect-may-30/article_2f11c261-112b-5bd1-8b87-912ff9561adf.html https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/new-ru... >The rule introduced by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft would block state funding for libraries if they allow minors to access books that are pornographic or labeled as obscene under state statutes So the headline could be restated as: Libraries in Missouri insist on making porn available to children, and lose their funding. In fact, it doesn't even say they can't have porn, it just says that they can't give it out to little kids. As somebody with young kids: can these people, on both sides, please stop trying to use my kids as soldiers in their petty culture wars? I want to be able to send my kids to a school and trust that the teachers there aren't going to try and use that as an opportunity to indoctrinate them. Teach them history, teach them math, and then leave them alone to be children. Here's what *IS* happening as a result of this culture war, and the insistence on making children be the pawns in it: the people who can afford it aren't sending their kids to public schools anymore. What this means is that public schools turn into proverbial ghettos; the places where only the kids who couldn't get out go. That is absolutely horrible. The idea of a public education should be something we're proud of as a society, but we're watching it be destroyed in the interest of a tiny minority of teachers and administrators pushing radical ideologies. The school, or the library, is not the place for this, and this absolutely tiny minority of activists is ruining a public good for everyone.

kyledrake 4y ago
"The banned books include graphic novels such as Batman and X-Men, a copy of Reader’s Digest, works about artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, graphic novel adaptations of classics by William Shakespeare and Mark Twain, the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus and other books about the Holocaust, and The Children’s Bible." https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/nearly-300-books-removed-from-schools-under-missouris-sexually-explicit-materials-law/2022/11 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/nearly-300-books-re...
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  Here's the full list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AVW8q-B4uSZIJ3mLqc5tY8DZyojI1KLIVBQzSCb7lbg/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AVW8q-B4uSZIJ3mLqc5t... Here is a parent reading aloud from the book (on this list) "Let's talk about it": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cd5VUhMrF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cd5VUhMrF4 He's reading about how, as a child, you can send sexually explicit photos to people on the internet. It seems *completely* reasonable to remove this book from libraries. Somewhat unsurprisingly, but demonstrative of exactly the type of erosion of trust I'm talking about WRT to the discourse around this topic, Batman and X-Men comics are not the focus of these types of book bans.
  - slater 4y ago
    > Batman and X-Men comics are not the focus of these types of book bans They never are. But hey, while we're at it, can we ban the bible, too? It's quite a violent book.
    - thepasswordis 4y ago
      "The Children's Bible" is one of the titles on the list.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Batman and X-Men comics are not the focus of these types of book bans. If they are on the list, they are part of the focus of the ban, whether or not they are part of what is used in the public propaganda. (That the public propaganda for these bans misrepresent the actual focus is another area of concern, of course.)
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    “Think of the children” is the oldest excuse in the book and is almost exclusively used to make sure your detractors/opposition look like they don’t care about children. In an age where seemingly half the GOP calls democrats “pedophiles” at the drop of a hat, this is an obvious tactic they’ll draw on.
cocacola1 4y ago
What indoctrination is actually going on? It’s a convenient bogeyman, but as someone that went through the public school system, and with younger siblings that did so after me, I’m honestly not sure what people mean by this.
femiagbabiaka 4y ago
I'd expect that it's not the pornographic bit, but the labelled as obscene bit that's the sticking point. I visited a lot of libraries in my youth, youth librarians actually don't make it a practice to give kids porn usually, kids seek that out on their own, it's part of their capacious nature. Also many books in libraries typically get donated (directly or via financial donations), especially in poorer areas, and porn is not really on the shortlist of things librarians tend to want to prioritize money for. Wouldn't it be better to prosecute specific misconduct than to create committees of politicians for book censorship?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I’d expect that it’s not the pornographic bit, but the labelled as obscene bit that’s the sticking point. Obsecenity is a legal category, and not all pornography is obscenity. OTOH, “labelled as obscene” may not actually be obscenity, and the list of the actual books banned under the law that this defunding is a retaliation for a lawsuit against seems to largely be books that are neither obscene nor pornographic.
  - femiagbabiaka 4y ago
    Yep, agreed! I'm not even so sure the Miller test makes much sense: ``` (1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. ``` I feel like all of this is downstream of the same trans panic that's going on right now. And all of it is exactly the same as the 70s and 80s gay/satanic panics.
deleted 4y ago
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kyledrake 4y ago

"The banned books include graphic novels such as Batman and X-Men, a copy of Reader’s Digest, works about artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, graphic novel adaptations of classics by William Shakespeare and Mark Twain, the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus and other books about the Holocaust, and The Children’s Bible." https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/nearly-300-books-removed-from-schools-under-missouris-sexually-explicit-materials-law/2022/11 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/nearly-300-books-re...

thepasswordis 4y ago
Here's the full list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AVW8q-B4uSZIJ3mLqc5tY8DZyojI1KLIVBQzSCb7lbg/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AVW8q-B4uSZIJ3mLqc5t... Here is a parent reading aloud from the book (on this list) "Let's talk about it": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cd5VUhMrF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cd5VUhMrF4 He's reading about how, as a child, you can send sexually explicit photos to people on the internet. It seems *completely* reasonable to remove this book from libraries. Somewhat unsurprisingly, but demonstrative of exactly the type of erosion of trust I'm talking about WRT to the discourse around this topic, Batman and X-Men comics are not the focus of these types of book bans.
- slater 4y ago
  > Batman and X-Men comics are not the focus of these types of book bans They never are. But hey, while we're at it, can we ban the bible, too? It's quite a violent book.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    "The Children's Bible" is one of the titles on the list.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Batman and X-Men comics are not the focus of these types of book bans. If they are on the list, they are part of the focus of the ban, whether or not they are part of what is used in the public propaganda. (That the public propaganda for these bans misrepresent the actual focus is another area of concern, of course.)
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  “Think of the children” is the oldest excuse in the book and is almost exclusively used to make sure your detractors/opposition look like they don’t care about children. In an age where seemingly half the GOP calls democrats “pedophiles” at the drop of a hat, this is an obvious tactic they’ll draw on.

cocacola1 4y ago

What indoctrination is actually going on? It’s a convenient bogeyman, but as someone that went through the public school system, and with younger siblings that did so after me, I’m honestly not sure what people mean by this.

femiagbabiaka 4y ago

I'd expect that it's not the pornographic bit, but the labelled as obscene bit that's the sticking point. I visited a lot of libraries in my youth, youth librarians actually don't make it a practice to give kids porn usually, kids seek that out on their own, it's part of their capacious nature. Also many books in libraries typically get donated (directly or via financial donations), especially in poorer areas, and porn is not really on the shortlist of things librarians tend to want to prioritize money for. Wouldn't it be better to prosecute specific misconduct than to create committees of politicians for book censorship?

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I’d expect that it’s not the pornographic bit, but the labelled as obscene bit that’s the sticking point. Obsecenity is a legal category, and not all pornography is obscenity. OTOH, “labelled as obscene” may not actually be obscenity, and the list of the actual books banned under the law that this defunding is a retaliation for a lawsuit against seems to largely be books that are neither obscene nor pornographic.
- femiagbabiaka 4y ago
  Yep, agreed! I'm not even so sure the Miller test makes much sense: ``` (1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. ``` I feel like all of this is downstream of the same trans panic that's going on right now. And all of it is exactly the same as the 70s and 80s gay/satanic panics.

deleted 4y ago

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