Book Banning

[raison de arizona]

Florida. Of course. An example of some of the banned books (ARE YOU F%^$^KING KIDDING ME???):



Full list: https://pen.org/banned-books-florida/

[AndyinPA]

Ditto!

Disgusting.

[RVInit]

I would love to see someone deploy thousands of bookmobiles full of nothing but banned books and park them right outside of schools so the kids could easily stop in.

I used to love the bookmobile, my favorite day of the week was when it would stop in my neighborhood.

[raison de arizona]

BREAKING

The school board in Escambia County, Florida just voted to BAN AND TANGO MAKES THREE, the true story of two male Penguins who lived in the Central Park Zoo

The pair build a nest together and raise an adopted child, Tango

There is no sexual content of any kind

2. The book was challenged by an English teacher in Escambia County, Vikki Baggett

Baggett said the book promoted the "LGBTQ agenda using penguins" and the purpose of the book is "indoctrination."

[neonzx]

j-f-c! If any of you have had the chance to read this short illustrated young children's book, you know it is innocuous.

[RTH10260]

An Oklahoma teacher faced death threats after she helped students access banned books. She says she's more scared for students than for herself.

Yelena Dzhanova
Sat, February 25, 2023 at 3:30 PM GMT+1

• An Oklahoma teacher who helped students access banned books faced death threats.
  Summer Boismier left her teaching job and now works at the Brooklyn Public Library.
  The threats still rattle her, but she's more worried that teens and kids are losing access to books.

An Oklahoma teacher who said she lost her job after helping her students access banned books is speaking out against the growing movement to censor books in schools.

Summer Boismier used to work as a high school English teacher in Oklahoma.

In 2021, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law to limit student engagement with critical race theory, gender identity, and sexuality in the classroom.

As soon as the bill was passed, Boismier gave her students a QR code that led them to the Brooklyn Public Library's Books Unbanned project, which allows them to read the very books that their own school officials deemed not appropriate. Books that have been popularly challenged are often about or feature people of color, LGBT people, and people with disabilities, according to the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association.

Boismier said she soon began receiving complaints, scary threats, and harassing messages across her social media platforms and emails.

"There've been countless individuals who've wanted me criminally charged, who've suggested at various points and times and comment sections across the internet," Boismier told Insider. "Individuals who've called for my prosecution and even my execution."

Some of them called for her sterilization, she said.

Boismier resigned from her teaching job and moved 1,500 miles away from her home to Brooklyn, New York, where she began working for the Brooklyn Public Library.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/oklahoma-tea ... 00881.html

(original: Business Insider)

[AndyinPA]

I used to think almost anybody would recognize that a country was on a bad path when you started book banning. I guess I was wrong.

[Frater I*I]

I used to think almost anybody would recognize that a country was on a bad path when you started book banning. I guess I was wrong.

For the Reich wing of America, it's a feature, not a bug...

[RTH10260]

I used to think almost anybody would recognize that a country was on a bad path when you started book banning. I guess I was wrong.

For the Reich wing of America, it's a feature, not a bug...

It's only really bad once the book burning starts

[raison de arizona]

Arizona Senate OKs making list of books to ban in schools

State senators gave preliminary approval Thursday to a measure directing the Education Department to come up with a list of books to ban in public schools.

And it wouldn’t just include lewd or sexual materials.

SB1700 would require the department, now headed by elected Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, to also include on that list materials that “promote gender fluidity or gender pronouns.’’

The measure includes similar language on what local school boards and school libraries would be required to remove from shelves.

https://tucson.com/news/government-and- ... cbdf6.html

[p0rtia]

I used to think almost anybody would recognize that a country was on a bad path when you started book banning. I guess I was wrong.

Me too. I have landed in a place where I think the operative word is "anybody". We are split as a tribe as if the country was an ice floe that had broken in half (philosophically, not geographically), and the bridge between the two parts has fallen.

So now I object when anyone discussing politics says "We think/do this...." or "Americans think/do that..." Who is "we"? I ask. People seem to be annoyed when I do this, but I persist.

It's like I'm tied to a 2,000 lb lead dummy in the shape of a human and people keep saying "Why don't you (pl) just swim to the surface?"

[Phoenix520]

Republicans are sheep. Clearly. I’d bet fewer than .01% of those voting had read any of the banned books.

Baa.

[neonzx]

It is almost like they are fascists or something?

[RTH10260]

Parent thanks Utah for book banning law that makes it 'so much easier' to challenge the 'sex-ridden' Bible

Kenneth Niemeyer
Sun, March 26, 2023 at 5:34 PM GMT+2

• A Utah parent asked that the Bible be removed from a high school because of its "sex-ridden" nature.
  The state lawmaker who sponsored the bill said the request was a "mockery" of the law.
  Laws banning certain kinds of books have plagued multiple states in recent years.

A Utah parent said that a book ban law passed in the state made it "much easier" to request that the Bible be removed from schools for its "sex-ridden" content.

According to a complaint filed against Davis High School in December 2022, recently obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, the unnamed parent thanked the state legislature for making it "way more efficient" to request book bans.

"Now we can all ban books and you don't even need to read them or be accurate about it," the complaint says, with just a hint of sarcasm. "Heck, you don't even need to see the book!"

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed H.B. 374 — also called the Sensitive Materials in Schools Act — into law in March 2022. The bill bans books with "pornographic or indecent" material from schools and school libraries. Critics of the bill say it has been used to disproportionately target books written by people of color and books with LGBTQ themes.

Book bans have plagued US schools in recent years across multiple states, including Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Florida. In September 2022, the Oklahoma education secretary threatened to revoke the teaching license of a teacher who gave her students a link to the Brooklyn Library's banned books database.

Utah Parents United — a conservative parents group that pushes for book bans in schools — has requested that some books be removed from Davis High School, which is about 20 miles north of Salk Lake City, according to the complaint.

"I noticed there's a gap, though," the parent said in the complaint. "Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: The Bible. Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide."

The parent said that the legislature would "no doubt find" that the Bible violates the state's new law because it has "'no serious values for minors because it's pornographic by our new definition."

"Get this PORN out of our schools! If the books that have been banned so far are any indication for way lesser offenses, this should be a slam dunk," the parent wrote in the complaint.

State Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican who sponsored the bill, told The Tribune that the request to ban the Bible from Davis High School was "antics that drain school resources." Ivory did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Sunday.

"For people to minimize that, and to make a mockery of it, is very sad," Ivory said, according to the paper.

The Davis School District and Utah Parents United did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Sunday. Utah Parents United told The Tribune in a statement that "we believe in following the law."

"That's all we're asking schools to do," the group said, according to the paper.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/parent-thank ... 17229.html

(original: INSIDER)

[Gene Kooper]

I can only wish that I am as cogent and energetic at 100 as Grace Linn. Her testimony at the Martin County, Florida School Board Meeting of March 21, 2023 should be heard by every American. I am named after my Uncle Gene who was 25 when his fighter plane was shot down in the South China Sea in March 1945 so Grace's testimony has added meaning for me.

None of the fuckwits that really need to hear her testimony will bother to hear the rantings of a doddering old woman. Thanks to Mrs. Gneiss for telling me I needed to see this woman speak!! Mrs. Gneiss also enjoyed seeing the fabulous quilt that Grace made.



And of course MSNBC's Ali Velshi had to interview her yesterday on his show.

#VelshiBannedBookClub: 100yr old Grace Linn quilts to fight bans

The best thing about the #VelshiBannedBookClub is the community we've formed over the last year – our devoted members who write to us from all over the nation with questions for authors, suggested books, and moving stories – like that of 100-year-old Grace Linn. At the age of 99, Linn made a quilt – featuring the covers of banned and challenged books including some of our own features like "Beloved" by Toni Morrison and "Two Boys Kissing" by David Levithan. This week, Linn, who has known the fight for democracy intimately since losing her first husband in WWII, went viral addressing 500 people at a school board meeting in Martin County Florida and told them just how crucial books and reading truly are. “Every human being is just as important as any other,” says Linn, who continues her decades-long dedication to freedom, democracy, and the books that protect those two impossibly fragile things.
March 25, 2023

Kudos to Grace Linn!

Edited to make sense

[raison de arizona]

Not a book but a Dolly Parton/Miley Cyrus song. About acceptance. Can't have that.

An elementary school in Wisconsin has banned Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton’s duet ‘Rainbowland’ from their Spring concert because it “could be perceived as controversial”…think it went something like this

Here are the evil banned lyrics, obvious behind a spoiler tag.

► Show Spoiler

"Hey Miley
It's me, I'm in Nashville
I'm on my way to Dollywood, busy as you are
Can't get enough stuff to do, can't
But anyway, I'm excited about singing with you
So I'm just gonna turn my, CD player on with you singing
I'm gon' put this on a cassette
Sing along with it, and then I'll run you off a CD later
Oh, I'm so high tech
I got a flip phone, too
But anyhow, see what you think
And um, here I go"
Come on
Living in a Rainbowland
Where everything goes as planned
And I smile
'Cause I know if we try, we could really make a difference in this world
I won't give up, I'll sleep a wink
It's the only thought I think, you know where I stand
I believe we can start living in a Rainbowland
Living in a Rainbowland
Where you and I go hand in hand
Oh, I'd be lying if I said this was fine
All the hurt and the hate going on here
We are rainbows, me and you
Every color, every hue
Let's shine on through
Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland
Living in a Rainbowland
The skies are blue and things are grand
Wouldn't it be nice to live in paradise
Where we're free to be exactly who we are
Let's all dig down deep inside
Brush the judgment and fear aside
Make wrong things right
And end the fight
'Cause I promise ain't nobody gonna win (come on)
Living in a Rainbowland
Where you and I go hand in hand
Oh, I'd be lying if I said this was fine
All the hurt and the hate going on here
We are rainbows, me and you
Every color, every hue
Let's shine on through
Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland
Living in a Rainbowland
Where you and I go hand in hand together (let's do it together)
Chase dreams forever
I know there's gonna be a greener land
We are rainbows, me and you
Every color, every hue
Let's shine on
Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland
"Hey Miley
Look, I know it sounds scrambled when I'm singing it with you
Wish I could do a little better
At least, I might not get it all the way through
'Cause I'm not sure of the structure without you
But I think this could work well, don't you?
If not, like I said
I'll write that love song for you
You probably wrote it about some boy you loved, didn't ya?
Well"

[neonzx]

Not a book but a Dolly Parton/Miley Cyrus song. About acceptance. Can't have that.

That is some creepy/scary stuff -- I may have seen a similar cult movie on streaming, but that was fake.

[Foggy]

Dolly Parton done went woke. Sad.

[Sam the Centipede]

Two women singing a duet - they must be lesbians!!!! Bane them!!!!

[neonzx]

Two women singing a duet - they must be lesbians!!!! Bane them!!!!

I know, right? My brain has been working on this problem for a day... I cannot process how ANYONE could attack Dolly. Across the political spectrum, I have never before seen her attacked. Her charity gives out free BOOKS to children-- oh, the horror!!

But ya know, when you are working 9-5... some asshole is going to come along.

[raison de arizona]

Poor people living in Missouri Misery.

Missouri Reps Just Voted to Completely Defund the State’s Public Libraries
The new budget sets funds for libraries to $0. Library groups say the move is retaliation for suing the state over its recent book ban law.

Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.

ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined explicit sexual material as images “showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,” “sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,” or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.

“The house budget committee’s choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri’s public libraries is abhorrent,” Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wgv5/ ... -book-bans

[raison de arizona]

Can’t ban the books? Well then, ban the whole library.

Wow. Two weeks ago a judge ordered the public library in Llano County, TX to return books banned by conservative activists.

Now, this week county officials will meet to discuss eliminating the library entirely.

More from @serrano_alej: texastribune.org/2023/03/31/tex…

[pipistrelle]

Rural people complain about rural communities dying out.

This ain't gonna help save them.

[Shizzle Popped]

340995815_542315534729198_3878772961350432270_n.jpg (118.66 KiB) Viewed 9474 times

It's a race to the bottom and Missouri is determined to win.

ETA: Well, apparently this is old news. See post above.

[RVInit]