Summary
Rightwing groups across the US are driving a wave of legislation to restrict books in school and public libraries, targeting content deemed “sexually explicit” or “obscene,” often affecting LGBTQ+ and race-related titles.
Texas leads with 31 bills and 538 book bans in the 2023–24 school year.
Proposed laws, like Texas Senate Bill 13, shift book selection power from librarians to parent-led advisory boards.
Critics, including librarians and legal scholars, warn these efforts amount to censorship, risk violating First Amendment rights, and reduce access in underserved communities.
“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)
so they are banning the Bible because of the obscene material in it?;
Lol no
I’m over 50 and they tried to ban Diary of Anne Frank when I was a kid. Sometimes they even succeeded.
Fucking idiots. Name one reason why kids shouldn’t read that book. They never could. Not a real reason anyway.
Over and over they try to ban books. The only thing that really changes is that they add books to the list.
They don’t like Diary of Anne Frank over guilt by association. They realize there are too many similarities between the way they “think” and nazism. Never fun to have a moment of reflection and realize you’re a horrible human being so they lash out at it, incapable of deeper introspection or betterment.
I was groomed by nazis, then was a conservative for a short while. The latter group tries to claim the historical nazis did their evil deeds for the sake of evil, with no moral justifications, because their little fabricated crime statistics would look bad. The former group exploits this spread of naive theories about evil.
Hurr durr she masturbates
They need to just get on with it, we all know what they want to do
Shit or get off the pot
Surely the free speech absolutists will be staunchly opposed. Why, if they weren’t, one could think it was never about free speech and always just about hate…
The “free speech absolutists” just wanted to call black people the N-word, they don’t actually care about the rest.
The “free speech absolutists” just wanted to call black people the N-word,
They are able to say it already (and they still do amongst themselves).
What they wanted is to be able to say it in public without consequences.
Obscene books like the Bible?
Conservatives simply hate free speech.
No no, they love free speech when it allows them to use hate speech against others. They only hate free speech when others opinions disagrees with their own. That is the difference between left and right, left understand that free speech means we have to protect against hate speech, the right rails against censorship regarding hate speech as a vehicle against “oppression” so they can be the ones that can attack those that disagree with them with hate speech.
“Free speech” is I get to call you the F-slur. “Obscenity” is you discussing any aspect of your life that differs from mine.
The Constitution according to Republicans:
We The People…words words GET TO HAVE AS MANY GUNS AS WE WANT words words…The End.
Please support your local library. Even if you just get a card and keep it active, it helps with stats that they use to get more funding.
probably direct support with your time and funding is a good idea, if you can. it certainly looks like federal grants are going away ☹️
Why do they care so much about libraries. it’s not like they or their kids read. How do you get illiterate people excited to ban books. It’s a god damn conspiracy!
Man fuck these people trying to dictate what people should think
You mean the Republicans or the fascists?
Jk, they’re one and the same.
So more wasting tax money for posturing and campaigning and not solving any actual problems
This isn’t posturing, it’s having a direct impact on the education of children in this country. This is them creating more problems.
I’d call it “wasting tax money perpetuating culture wars as a distraction from the class war; while also making the population dumber, and less inclined to resist feudalism.”
“Bu-but the right wingers promised me that I could say the hard-R N-word yet again, and if people were to call me ‘racist’ for it they’d be jailed for defamation, and they’d also jail feminist video game critics for censoring games!”
That country is so fucking stupid its unbelievable
Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.
-Faber (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)
only one thing for it. Put as much indecent material in the library as possible. Also I used to work at a library and every now and then this like 80 year old dude would come in and say “show me where your dirty books are!” that guy was awesome.
