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Illinois to Become First State to Ban Book Bans
- allears 3y agoThis legislation removes state funding from libraries or schools that ban books. I'm concerned that this will have the unintended consequence that conservative groups will still ban books, libraries will lose funding, and perhaps be forced to close. This outcome won't bother conservatives one bit.
- hammock 3y agoAgreed. Wouldn’t school choice make more sense? If parents are given vouchers for example, everyone can support a library that they want to and there is no decrease in school funding
- alphanullmeric 3y ago[flagged]
- outside1234 3y agoSounds great when you are rich, not so much when you aren't
- BurningFrog 3y agoSchool vouchers are paid for by the government.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoSchool choice only makes sense if schools cannot choose their students and must accommodate all of them.
- nonethewiser 3y agoBy ban books we mean what? Not allowing certain books to be rented in the library?
- watchface 3y agoYes.
- brewdad 3y agoOk, but what is the end game? Those parents will either have to homeschool, which they can already do, or you are going to force your kids to attend school with the families you paid a premium to avoid living near.
- jimmygrapes 3y agoSeems right to me. Homeschool and teach your kids directly, in whatever form that may take, and with all the rebellion, exemplary results, and/or indoctrination it may come with; or, use your available resources to get your kids trained roughly the way you want; or, let your kids be taught with and by whatever system is available with minimal to zero input. Stratification and discrimination between individuals is pretty natural, even if it's morally abhorrent. Mandates ain't gonna change any of it.
- onetimeusename 3y agoYou should read what the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights says. This is very much a double-edged sword I hope you realize.
- rayiner 3y ago[flagged]
- hparadiz 3y ago[flagged]
- clipsy 3y agoIn this case it is right wing censors like you who wish to decide "what books kids should read."
- rayiner 3y agoIt’s not censorship for the voting public to decide what books will be purchased with taxpayer dollars. That’s a complete inversion of the reality.
- watchface 3y ago[flagged]
- krapp 3y agoRemember when banning books was something only Nazis and fascists did? It's crazy how transactional some fundamental American values have become lately.
- NoRelToEmber 3y ago[flagged]
- joshuamorton 3y agoI'm not strictly opposed to the voting public being able to decide what books will be purchased with taxpayer dollars. But, if you actually want to go that route, then you need to be comfortable with the voting public deciding that they can purchase books that you personally dislike, as is the case in Illinois! Otherwise you're not arguing in favor of democracy, you're arguing in favor of your own personal moralizing.
- NoRelToEmber 3y ago[flagged]
- diligence_ 3y ago[dead]
- egberts1 3y ago[flagged]
- watchface 3y ago[flagged]
- outside1234 3y agoNope - and that's great!
- pyuser583 3y agoYeah but “banning books” isn’t much of a thing. Even the ALA talks about “challenged books.” And most of the controversy involves school libraries - although there are some exceptions. This bill just doesn’t do much. I’m not opposed to it. I guess it might do a little good. But it’s posturing by politicians.
- readthenotes1 3y agoI really doubt they'll let excerpts from those books be read in city council meetings or on the radio ....
- woodruffw 3y ago> And most of the controversy involves school libraries - although there are some exceptions. This is splitting hairs: removing books from school libraries is a de facto ban on those books. Neither the article nor law implies that "book ban" in this context means anything other than "school book ban."
- BurningFrog 3y agoAccording to [1] There are about 130M published books in the world. So by your definition, does a school library with 13k books ban 99,99% of all books? [1]
- woodruffw 3y agoYou missed a link. No. Not stocking a book because it's physically impossible to stock all books in the world is not the same as banning it. The ALA's statement[1] is clear, and IMO common-sense: proscribing or removing content for doctrinal reasons is the problem. [1]: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill
- BurningFrog 3y agoSorry about the link. Not great for my credibility. The concrete "book bans" I've heard about have been that Maus is no longer required reading in 8th grade, or that explicit sex pictures are banned from middle school libraries. Neither seem terrible to me. What are the most egregious bans I might actually be upset by?
- pessimizer 3y agoI don't even understand what this would mean for school libraries. I literally understand what it means, because it is toothless - it simply requires libraries to declare that they are against censorship. I don't understand what that declaration means for school libraries. It certainly doesn't require them to shelve donated erotic literature or the works of prominent neo-Nazis. Questions of school library censorship have always been about age-appropriateness, or blasphemy, or antiquated common but now forbidden ideas. If not buying and not accepting donations of that material isn't a ban, then what could possibly be? If it does count as a ban, every school library now has to carry the complete works of Lyndon LaRouche? edit: a real ban on bans in my eyes would be a state restriction on local governments passing book bans that apply to public schools and libraries. It wouldn't be aimed at the libraries themselves.
- nonethewiser 3y agoSeeing how the word “banned” is used, it means they must offer every book for loan.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago[dead]
- aidenn0 3y agoSo if I donate a pornographic novel to an elementary school in Illinois, besides being an asshole, have I put them in a position of having to circulate it or lose funding?
- woodruffw 3y agoNo library system is under any particular obligation to stock what you give them, much less accept donations to begin with. It's unclear why they would be, much less why this would be a "gotcha" in this context.
- refurb 3y agoSo what you're saying is any library can ban a book?
- woodruffw 3y agoI don’t understand. Did you think that you could just spam libraries with books before this law? Libraries refusing to stock whatever mystery material is thrown at them is a logistical concern, not a matter of “banning.” Confusing the two borders on legal crank reasoning.
- sangnoir 3y ago> Did you think that you could just spam libraries with books before this law? Semantic games - especially false equivalences - are part and parcel of the culture wars. "Book bans are fine because librarians have been 'banning' books. Checkmate"
- sangnoir 3y agoCuration =/= banning. Telling curators (librarians) "You can't have any book on this list even if you want them, or you'll go to jail" is banning books.
- tomp 3y ago
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[flagged]
- pas 3y agoSexual education at early age is very important. Teaching kids what sex is, and how to recognize it, and teaching them that it is something that adults do to adults. Child sexual abuse happens to a large part because kids don't understand what's happening to them early on, the actual grooming part, then when it's too late they don't want to speak about it. Obviously there are better and worse books for every topic. And the context of these political actions make it clear that it's not about the quality of the presentation.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago"Any book worth banning is a book worth reading." ― Isaac Asimov PS: Is it me, or does 2023 feel like 1981 all over again in socioeconomic and political conditions?
- jojobas 3y agoSure, read this. https://www.kcrg.com/2023/05/19/this-book-is-gay-iowas-looming-school-library-book-ban/ https://www.kcrg.com/2023/05/19/this-book-is-gay-iowas-loomi...
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoCouldn’t we leave this up to the affected constituents only? If you don’t have a child in the school you can’t request a book be removed. You can request that your child not have access to a book. If you don’t reside in the library area you can’t request a book be removed, but you can put a restriction that your account cannot check out certain books. Isn’t that enough to respect everyone’s desires here? Why do we even need a law like this?
- hyperliner 3y ago[dead]
- propogandist 3y ago[flagged]
- greenhorn360 3y ago[flagged]
- propogandist 3y agodegenerates will be stoned, don’t worry. And all liberal strongholds will become shitholes like Chiraq.
- dang 3y agoWe've banned this account for using HN primarily for flamewar and ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're flaming or battling for. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- dang 3y agoWe've banned this account for using HN primarily for flamewar and ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're flaming or battling for. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- p1necone 3y agoI don't know if it's literally the same people, but it's pretty amusing watching conservatives be hardcore no compromises first amendment absolutists when it comes to speech they agree with, while simultaneously being willing to define it as narrowly as necessary when it comes to silencing speech they don't agree with.
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoThe central premise is always centered around the teaching to kids. Show me powerful conservatives who want trans/LGBT books banned from Amazon, or pressuring major book publishers, or outright actual bans in which parents aren't allowed to teach their children from these books. It starts and ends at the classroom/children.
- Timon3 3y agoOne quick example: two Virginia Republicans tried to stop Barnes & Noble from selling two LGBT books to kids. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/20/gender-queer-barnes-and-noble/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/20/gender-q...
- vxNsr 3y agoso again, erotica to kids...
- Timon3 3y agoIt's always "about the children", until it suddenly isn't. It was "about the children" when conservatives were attacking gender-affirming care, until suddenly laws were introduced to ban it for everyone. It was "about the children" when conservatives attacked drag shows, until suddenly laws were introduced to ban it in public for everyone. Why is it going to be different this time?
- vxNsr 3y ago
- TheCaptain4815 3y ago[flagged]
- VectorLock 3y agoYes, banning and teaching are definitely the same thing.
- it_citizen 3y agoI see a lot of flagged comments of people claiming that "degenerate books" were pushed on people. Is that really a thing? Is it more than isolated incidents? From my information bubble, those claims seem so foreign to me. Can someone give me multiple examples with: 1) name of the book 2) problematic example in the book 3) the age of people to which the book was accessible
- londgine 3y agoI'm not going to search for multiple examples, I'll leave that up to you. But here is the first result from Google https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/knox-zajac-reads-aloud-from-pornographic-book-at-school-board-meeting/amp/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/knox-zajac-reads-aloud-from-po... Feel free to Google keywords such as "school board" "read" "book" "kids" for more examples.
- regularjack 3y agoIt's not possible to provide you examples because there is no such thing as degenerate books.
- soulofmischief 3y agoMarquis de Sade would beg to differ.
- laratied 3y agoI don't have or want kids so have never had an opinion on this. I see “Nick and Charlie" mentioned in an article. A book about two gay boys that get drunk and fool around. If you just look at the cover it is going to be super triggering to some repressed parent. Especially since many of the fathers are going to have unexpressed homoerotic fantasies themselves. To me, the whole thing seems like a huge unproductive distraction from actual learning. Imagine if parents gave a shit about the math books to this degree.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoThere is a big difference between Lolita by Vladimir Naboko and To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee in a school library. Fahrenheit 451 is coming true every day in the land of the free - you can't change history by banning books - the world being what it is , tales of slavery and Jim Crow will be eternal outside the South.
- liamtuohyff 3y agoQuite a few banned comments on this thread about banned books, ironic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- KenArrari 3y agoCan't wait to read the transcript of the Joe Rogan n-word episode at the library.