It was surprising to me just how many of the banned books have immense literary value. The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale, The Kite Runner, etc. aren't random books that may be a little obscene, they're literary classics. In my opinion this is what makes it obvious that these bans were made in bad faith.
dfxm12 · 17m ago
Republicans have been transparent that they want to dehumanize brown people, women and other minorities. They've been transparent about their desires to censor media. They've been transparent about their disdain for access to education. Don't look at these things in vacuum. It's a systemic approach. They've long lost the benefit of the doubt; bad faith is to be assumed.
rayiner · 2m ago
[delayed]
bigfishrunning · 1h ago
Yes, extremely bad faith. These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity, but they're not obscene.
zozbot234 · 5m ago
> These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity
Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.
gosub100 · 53m ago
I'm frankly surprised that kids read books at all. With video games and smartphones and all this attention-draining junk, I would like to see how many books are actually read per 100 kids per month. I would be surprised if it even runs into the double digits.
bryanlarsen · 51m ago
Outliers skew averages. I know a couple of kids that read dozens of books per month.
nilamo · 5m ago
No bans are needed at all then. If "nobody" reads, then "bad" books can't hurt anyone.
whimsicalism · 51m ago
it doesn’t matter whether kids read books, all that matters is parents and how they vote.
also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.
terminalshort · 30m ago
Why limit it to kids? My brain and attention span is so rotted from the internet that I find it immensely difficult these days too.
makeitdouble · 15m ago
> attention-draining junk
To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.
Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.
Der_Einzige · 18m ago
Most good books are subversive towards the goals of education. I couldn't believe when they unironically asked me to read "Pedegogy of the Oppressed" and than tried to give grades on it.
Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.
But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques
skrebbel · 28m ago
It's standard Trumpian negotiation. Ban lots of books, outrage ensues, courts get involved, some books get unbanned. But not all!
dfxm12 · 1m ago
Also par for the course: lots of wasted taxpayer money.
btilly · 53m ago
There is a lot of evidence that engaging emotionally with literature will shift people's values. In a way that engaging with intellectual ideas does not.
These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.
That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.
tremon · 44m ago
Did the people pursuing these bans consider having empathy with the people who value these books, and try to understand why they value them?
Stop defending tyranny.
Anonbrit · 35m ago
You can have radical empathy with somebody while standing against and fighting every single thing they stand for. Indeed empathy /helps/ you fight better, because you can begin to fight root causes rather than fighting symptoms, and help people heal rather than just shouting them down.
You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.
To have empathy with a view is not condoning it
tremon · 28m ago
Indeed. But demanding empathy as the only valid a counter-strategy is, which is what the GP was doing. Appeasement doesn't work if your opponent isn't following the rulebook.
From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.
LexiMax · 6m ago
The sort of understanding the GP is promoting doesn't have to be used empathetically.
It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.
wizzwizz4 · 8m ago
Correct: but giving them a thousand timeouts doesn't help, if you still need to give the thousand-and-first. It mitigates the immediate problem, but it also ties up your resources. Eliminating the problem at its root, if that's possible, is a more effective strategy: if we can take away the ability for the real bad actors to get loyal followers, by learning how to change those followers' minds, they won't have anywhere near as much power.
vpribish · 32m ago
he's proposing that outrage is not the best way to oppose them - that we can be more clever and effective by knowing the enemy
tremon · 11m ago
But the GP didn't even identify the enemy correctly, so all that effort would be wasted. The people they're describing are mere tools, only required because of the existing democratic processes in the country. The enemy are the (insert your favourite label here) at the top of the media and political landscape pulling the strings. And I guarantee you, they aren't quite so bothered by the imagery in those books as they are bothered by freedom of thought in general. They are bothered by people that dare to speak truth to power. They are not bothered by appeasement strategies such as we people trying to understand the other people they've pitted against us.
krapp · 42m ago
No. They consider empathy a sin, actually, especially empathy with people they consider sexually perverse.
nancyminusone · 7m ago
I don't think changing their minds is a requirement. They are allowed to not like something, but they shouldn't be able to ban it.
nerdjon · 23m ago
While I can understand the side that you are coming from. One of the biggest failures I have seen from my friends is demonizing anyone that may have voted for tump and these people, and refusing to have a conversation. Immediately labeling them as racist for example (which I don't think is necessarily untrue for many of them, but when we know there are black people that voted for Trump that argument as a blanket statement gets harder to make).
I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.
There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.
While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.
That being said...
It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.
So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.
amanaplanacanal · 9m ago
I can totally understand that they are being manipulated. I still have no interest in trying to de-program them. Cut them off, and let them live with their choices. They'll either figure it out eventually, or they won't.
People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.
nerdjon · 3m ago
I completely respect a personal choice of doing that, I mean I don't particularly want to engage with many of them either. Especially not when I can expect that I am going to likely be called a particular F word (I am a gay man).
My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.
I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.
We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.
TimTheTinker · 51m ago
> these bans were made in bad faith
It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.
There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey.
rideontime · 47m ago
A lot of things are "possible." Do you have any evidence to support this version of events?
jwally · 1h ago
Is the Bible still ok???
--------------------
Genesis 16:4 – “And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived…” (Abram and Hagar)
Genesis 29:23 – “…and he went in unto her.” (Jacob and Leah)
Genesis 30:4 – “…and Jacob went in unto her.” (Jacob and Bilhah)
Ruth 4:13 – “…and he went in unto her, and the LORD gave her conception…” (Boaz and Ruth)
Variants & related euphemisms
Genesis 38:16 – “…he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee…” (Judah and Tamar)
2 Samuel 11:4 – “And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her…” (David and Bathsheba)
Leviticus 18:6+ – “uncover nakedness” is repeated as a sexual euphemism.
Genesis 38:9 – “…when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground…” (Onan; explicit ejaculation reference).
danpelota · 58m ago
Ezekiel 23:20 - "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
acephal · 4m ago
Don't forget the story in Judges where a Hebrew assasin stabs an obese Canaanite king in the gut and he shits himself but his guards outside the room were already used to him shitting himself so ignored the smell.
bigfishrunning · 1h ago
I don't think the bible is in public school libraries -- if it is (as historical literature), it's probably unconstitutional to teach from it or promote it.
linotype · 57m ago
> it's probably unconstitutional to teach from it or promote it
The Constitution only applies if there are people able and willing to enforce it.
jwally · 51m ago
This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally.
This lets people at the top do whatever now since the eventual consequences (if any) are way out in the future and punitive to the gains they get now.
Its like being a bank robber with a Ferrari when the cops are stuck using horse-and-buggies.
komali2 · 18m ago
> This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally.
My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another.
Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.
bryanlarsen · 52m ago
The bible is a crucial piece of literature reference. Pretty much every literary piece written before the middle of the 20th century assumed that their reader was also intimately familiar with the bible.
For example, a writer could call a woman a "Jezebel" without any expository context, assuming that the reader would know what that meant.
Thus the bible should be in every high school and higher education library.
graemep · 35m ago
It should be commonly taught as a work of literature. Ideally the KJV which has largely fallen out of favour (except with certain groups) as a religious translation because more recent translations are so much better (advances in scholarship, more discoveries of early manuscripts...) but which is beautiful as a work.
nemomarx · 35m ago
any Western literary piece. for translated novels from China you might want some other foundational texts on hand, or the Quran to complement Persian literature, or etc
But I don't see any reason a library can't have various books from antiquity, for reference at least. Probably multiple editions or translations of each too.
jeroenhd · 22m ago
TIL "Jezebel" is a reference to the bible.
Without the bible, people still have dictionaries if they don't understand words or references. Or they could use Google. I don't see why some books would be "too crucial" not to ban in a law banning books intended to protect kids.
If anything, I find it easier to defend a ban on religious books in (public) schools.
bryanlarsen · 18m ago
Typically biblical references are references to parables or lessons, not single words that can be easily looked up in a dictionary.
jjallen · 59m ago
The Ten Commandments are required to be posted on every public school wall in Texas. You would have guessed that that is also unconstitutional
SoftTalker · 8m ago
They are deemed to be secular, like Christmas.
epistasis · 59m ago
The Bible is commonly in public schools, as are other religious books.
Having a book available does not mean promoting it or establishing it as a religion.
projektfu · 11m ago
My public school library had several Bible versions, a couple Quran versions, and probably some Buddhist and Hindu texts of interest, though I didn't look for them. Why shouldn't they have these in the library?
jameshart · 58m ago
I would be shocked if any library didn’t have bibles in its collection. It’s crucial reference material.
jccalhoun · 12m ago
It was totally in my library when I was in high school in the late 80s but I was in a small school in the midwest.
asadotzler · 24m ago
You thought wrong. Visit a library sometime to see otherwise. Various Bibles can be found in many public libraries.
jwally · 57m ago
from the article:
>Since its passage in 2023, Florida schools have removed hundreds of books under House Bill 1069 (HB 1069). HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book.
krapp · 46m ago
Lol, of course the Bible is always OK, but you can find much worse.
And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. – Genesis 19:33–36.
And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my sister. And she answered him, Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly. And I, whither shall I cause my shame to go? and as for thee, thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray thee, speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee. Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. – 2 Samuel 13:11–14
Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. - Isaiah 13:16.
And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms. She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way, And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity: And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them. So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister. Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth. - Ezekiel 23:11-21
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. – Numbers 31:18
It's OK because there's no gay stuff. Just good old fashioned heterosexual rape and incest, as God intended.
jwally · 25m ago
Deuteronomy 22:28–29.
“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”
Rapin' is ok if she doesn't belong to someone else (theft) and you have $50. Also HIS penalty is that HE has to marry HER.
FrustratedMonky · 38m ago
So for LOT. Is it ok if the daughters initiate it? What is the lessen here? Is it trying to make some point about, better to keep the family going if there aren't any other men around?
graemep · 25m ago
No, it does not endorse it, mere recounts it. Claiming it is endorsing incest is a bit like saying Agatha Christie endorses murder.
There does not seem to be a clear interpretation of this AFAIK. A lot of the other bits of Genesis have clear messages (e.g. the creation myth, the near sacrifice of Isaac, etc.) but not all necessarily. It might be that there were no other men and they were desperate for children.
komali2 · 24m ago
No, it's not ok. Contextually the daughters believe the world just ended because Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed so they think they need to re-seed the world, which one might consider a justification, but the etiological purpose is to describe the origin of the Moabites and the Ammonites, who are the historical enemies of Israel, and is supposed to show how these two enemy tribes have a shameful beginning (incest). So, it's bad what they did and ew look how gross the Moabites and Ammonites are.
epistasis · 1h ago
It's shocking how little opposition laws like get this from people who call themselves "free speech absolutists." Here we have straightforward censorship, by the government, yet it all flies under the radar.
The people who fight for free speech in these cases, devoting time and money to it, and have real meaningful effect, self-describe in more ordinary ways.
mlinhares · 1h ago
That's because they're not "free speech absolutists", they're fascists that want to force their own idea of what valid speech is on everyone else.
prox · 42m ago
If true they fit the exact definition of doublespeak.
gosub100 · 49m ago
Same thing the far left does on college campuses. They just do it under the guise of victimhood with terms like "assault" being used to describe someone speaking an unpopular opinion. If the school book wars said the kids were "assaulted" by this "hate speech" would that make it okay? Is that what they are missing is someone feigning victimhood?
epistasis · 42m ago
Speaking an unpopular opinion on campus might mean you hear other people saying things that you don't like, as well?
In what way do you consider this similar to laws enforced by courts and police and the full legal system?
DrillShopper · 28m ago
False equivalence - I don't see lefty culture warriors burning books/removing them from libraries.
They are fighting to get different books (less Eurocentric, for the most part) into the curriculum, but they're not removing them from the library.
xnx · 1h ago
Almost without exception, people who loudly proclaim to be one thing: free speech absolutist, anti-tax, heterosexual, small government, "tough on crime" are exactly the opposite.
gosub100 · 46m ago
Universities saying they're "diverse" until some students started promoting terrorist and acting anti-Semitic.
steveBK123 · 1h ago
Yes, the same people that need the 2A right to guns to protect themselves from government tyranny also are totally fine with other forms of government tyranny.
NickC25 · 1h ago
As long as the tyrants are on "their" "side" , 2A gun nuts love government tyranny, and the right to commit tyranny.
mindslight · 28m ago
I'm not really a fan of either party, so I tend to dwell on the most glaring irrefutable examples that shine through groupthink biases.
Breonna Taylor being summarily executed by government agents for Kenneth Walker exercising his natural right to night time home defense. This is the exact scenario the 2A enthusiasts are always grandstanding about - "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away", "From my cold, dead hands", etc. Any yet the response from the sheer majority of supposed 2A enthusiasts? Utter fucking silence, if not outright support for the jackboots.
epistasis · 3m ago
This is shown throughout history too. When the Black Panthers were around the NRA was strongly in support of gun control.
antonymoose · 32m ago
By your logic, the government should be forced to purchase firearms and make them freely available to the citizens.
The government deciding standards for content it purchase is neither tyranny nor fascism. You are free to purchase as much controversial or sexually explicit material as you see fit.
root_axis · 1h ago
"Free speech absolutist" is a self-described label for partisan censors. Honest people understand that there's no such thing as absolute free speech.
No comments yet
whimsicalism · 50m ago
i don’t support this law at all, but i think it is pretty obvious that there is a difference between free speech and governmental discretion in what is taught in school. free speech doesn’t require that schools stock the “Bell Curve” or Mein Kampf for instance
ModernMech · 6m ago
Remember the part of the book where "love" is really "war" and "freedom" is really "slavery"? It's like that. "Absolute free speech" is really "only party-approved speech".
terminalshort · 36m ago
I completely disagree with this law, but I don't understand how this is a free speech issue. AFAIK the law isn't restricting anyone's right to freedom of speech because under this law anyone in FL is free to own, publish, buy, sell, read, or stock any book in any privately owned library.
It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free. It seems to me like compelled speech to require the government to stock certain books. As this pertains to schools, I don't understand how the government doesn't have the same right to control the curriculum as it does in any other case. e.g. it is not a violation of a teacher's right to free speech to order them not to teach flat earth theory in public schools because that teacher is an employee and not on their own time. Same as my employer can restrict my speech while on the job without violating my rights.
epistasis · 23m ago
Your first and second paragraphs are in opposition to each other. The government is setting strict rules about what sort of books are allowed with this law. It's not a mere selection of the many books, but a strict ban of certain types of books based on their content. When the government establishes laws like this, they must be in accordance with our constitution above all, and that sort of strict criteria on banning certain types of books disagrees with the first amendment and the legal tradition around it.
Similarly, you are also wrong about this compelling the government to stock certain books, that's not on the table at all.
terminalshort · 17m ago
But no books are banned. The government is allowed to set school curriculum in every other case, so why not this one? If you don't like government school rules set by the government, then who gets to set them? I don't think you have a good answer to this.
You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question, which in this case is the state whose budget and laws are controlled by the legislature.
nozzlegear · 12m ago
> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be?
It's the school librarian, who purchases books from their vendor lists. Depending on the school, the school board might vote to put a selection policy in place for the librarian. A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
terminalshort · 5m ago
That may be your preference as to how it should be done, and I see no problem with that. But if your approach is constitutional, so is Florida's. The librarian is an agent of the same government that is controlled by the legislature. If he can decide what books get in and which don't, so can the legislature.
> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
nozzlegear · 17m ago
> It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free.
The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't kosher is that taken to its extreme, the government could ban all books that aren't the King James Bible without explicitly adopting a pro-King James Bible policy. And if that's the only kind of book they stock in the library, then children who want to check out books are going to be reading literature with a certain kind of slant to it.
Replace the King James Bible with whatever you personally wouldn't want kids to be reading, e.g. the Quran or the Kama Sutra.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 53m ago
What flew under the radar? It was challenged in court and struck down. The system seems to work no? How else should it work?
steveBK123 · 32m ago
Would be preferable to not see administrations repeatedly try obviously blatantly unconstitutional moves. Don't need to be a constitutional law expert to see the problem here.
Is driving 100mph down the highway OK as long as you slow down right before the known speed trap? The system worked?
slibhb · 16m ago
It is notably weird to react to this article by criticizing "free speech absolutists". Who are the people you're criticizing? Be specific. Free speech absolutists are mostly principled people who want to defend civil liberties while getting flak from the right and left.
An example of this is FIRE -- which was massively criticized by progressives for suing colleges over anti-conservative speech codes, DEI statements, etc. But FIRE has behavred in a princicpled manner and has sued conservatives and the Trump administration over civil liberties violations.
komali2 · 47m ago
Aaaagh! I feel your frustration but I myself am frustrated at this dance Americans still play at that there are constitutionalists there, or people interested in "maintaining the institutions" or "free speech." There are only two kinds of politicians in America: neoliberals who are looking for opportunities to commodify the State or people in it, and fascists (or baby fascists) interested in achieving Christian nationalist or white nationalist goals by any means necessary.
Even the word "libertarian" doesn't mean "anarchist" in America as it does everywhere else, to refer to the most far-left you take take political ideology. Instead it refers to a deeply right-wing ideology obsessed with corporatocracy.
graemep · 21m ago
liberal commodification and Christian nationalism are both contradictions in terms.
In the UK and I understand libertarianism to mean an extreme free market position, usually in the belief that markets will fix problems unregulated. I think the UK definition is less extreme than the US one but on similar lines.
terminalshort · 33m ago
There is no philosophical difference between libertarianism and anarchism, only a difference in how they predict people will behave in the absence of centralized authority.
komali2 · 10m ago
There's a huge philosophical difference! American libertarians are highly focused on individualism and zero-sum behavior and thinking, whereas anarchism is a collective ideology focused on mutual aid or even communism (e.g. Kropotkin's Anarchist Communism).
Libertarianism is an application of right-wing ideology subtracting the State. Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies, but for another example, just because Nazism advocated for nationalizing industries doesn't mean it has anything beyond that in common with Marxist Leninist Communism which advocates for the same.
terminalshort · 1m ago
> Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies
Yes, that's the philosophy. All the rest of what you said is just listing different predictions of what will happen after you get rid of the state. Once you get rid of the state, there is no authority to enforce the "mutual aid or communism" so that isn't a political philosophy. It's just a prediction of what will people will do under their own free will in the absence of a compelling authority.
poplarsol · 1h ago
All of these books are freely available if you would like to spend your own money on them, as opposed to public funds.
lesuorac · 1h ago
Public funds are our money. They are literally our tax dollars.
Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
bigfishrunning · 1h ago
Public funds are your money, but also the money of those who don't agree with you.
Cerium · 45m ago
This is why I'm ok with the fact that the library has some books I like and agree with and many that I don't care about, and some I don't agree with.
epistasis · 1h ago
Our constitution is the first agreement we have on how to settle any disagreement. It can be changed, it enough people agree.
morkalork · 38m ago
A government cannot function if every person who doesn't like something gets veto on spending. Pick any topic and you'll be able to find half a dozen special interest groups against spending money on it.
perihelions · 58m ago
The amount of public money lost litigating the losing side of this lawsuit surely dwarfs the costs of the books involved? I say again, losing side, because this failed law was very clearly unconstitutional all along—the proponents went out of their way to transfer this taxpayer money to law firms, for a stunt.
tremon · 55m ago
I think it's not a stunt but a strategy. They probably always planned to bring this case all the way to beef supreme court, so that they can neuter the First Amendment entirely.
epistasis · 1h ago
What does that point have to do anything?
They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution.
The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
bigfishrunning · 1h ago
I think the problem with these laws is that they're too general. I think we can all agree that there are topics that should not be in elementary school libraries -- I don't think my 7 year old needs to be reading about oral sex for instance, regardless of the gender or sexuality of the participants. The real problem is the nature of the wording of "pornographic", which is poorly defined as "I know it when i see it", and stretched by disingenuous people with an agenda.
As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
epistasis · 54m ago
In what way would you consider yourself an "absolutist" with views like these? It seems that free speech has quite a few limitations in your view.
bigfishrunning · 48m ago
Let's take the opposite approach -- should schools stock back-issues of "Hustler" magazine? What about the "Anarchists Cookbook"? should we print it and put it on the shelf of a middle school?
You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
epistasis · 39m ago
I'm asking about "absolutist" and it's meaning. You replied with something different, about which books should or should not be in a school library.
What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"?
Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
bigfishrunning · 35m ago
There's a difference between allowing you to say something and hiring you to say it to my kids.
epistasis · 18m ago
Got it, you have made that abundantly clear (and not that it matters but I agree.)
Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"?
I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
komali2 · 29m ago
There's not really anything in the anarchist cookbook that isn't everywhere on the internet at this point, or even youtube.
wnoise · 24m ago
Topics? No, I don't agree with that. Almost any subject can be treated in an age-appropriate manner.
A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library.
For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration.
I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
alistairSH · 56m ago
My (completely inadequate) test... would the people banning books in FL (or wherever else) apply those same rules to the Bible? If not, they're not interested in protecting the children from explicit, but rather forcing their religious ideology on the rest of us.
fknorangesite · 1h ago
Of course - nothing you've said here is controversial. But anyone looking at this issue with honesty knows perfectly well that silencing minority literature is exactly the point.
Any other claims are bad-faith "won't somebody please think of the children" nonsense.
Project 2025 defines all transgender content as inherently pornographic. These censors are not being subtle about their true aims.
bigfishrunning · 57m ago
The point I'm trying to make is that panicing about book bans is not how you combat these bad-faith actors. It's defining rules to satiate their stated aims, and force them to bring their other motives to light, thus nullifying their arguments.
UncleMeat · 43m ago
Their stated aims are banning any visibility of trans people in all media.
Levitz · 42m ago
Aren't public schools part of government? This looks like a bizarre state of affairs to me if the government can't regulate speech from the government.
Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties.
EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess:
>A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment.
>Judge Mendoza disagreed.
>“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
epistasis · 38m ago
Stocking a book in a library is not speech from the government. If it were, we couldn't have religious books in school libraries, but we do.
poplarsol · 32m ago
If stocking a book is not speech then it is not a restriction on speech to decide not to stock a book.
epistasis · 20m ago
Any individual decision, no. A systematic bias over many decisions could be a restriction on speech.
A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
n4r9 · 1h ago
> freely ... spend your own money
Come on, now.
Levitz · 41m ago
Freely as in freedom, not as in free beer.
rayiner · 5m ago
There is a high likelihood this ruling gets overturned. The title and the article use the term “book ban” but gloss over what’s actually happening which is legally significant:
> HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book
Florida cannot ban private libraries from stocking books with sexual content. But librarians are government employees buying books and maintaining libraries with government money. The state can direct its employees what kinds of books to make available for the same reason any private entity can do so.
This might be different if libraries were neutral venues for authors to come present about their books. In that case you might have a case about viewpoint discrimination. But the first amendment can’t force the government to buy particular books and make them available to the public.
nerdjon · 47m ago
Well... it is nice to get some good news on this front but I can't shake that this is likely short lived given the federal government right now...
There is less and less any reason for them to try to hide their true intentions and can just be more open with their blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc etc.
Side note: was quite surprised to see a reference to Cloud Atlas. While not surprised given the entire point of that book, it makes me wonder how much these people are actually reading these books and what that looks like.
duxup · 6m ago
The other route, rather than ban books is to threaten librarians with prosecution so they do the job for legislators, perhaps just out of fear:
Well it’s not over yet, this will likely go through many rounds of back and forth appeals since it’s not clear what obligation Florida has to the public in policing content it purchases. It’s not as if they banned you from buying the books, after all.
epistasis · 34m ago
Seems like they could rely on the librarian to make decisions, then if there's a problem have the administration deal with it, and escalate as normal...
Rather than big government via vague laws that allow random people to control everything in schools.
DudeOpotomus · 59m ago
At no time in human history have the people who banned books been on the good side.
Levitz · 38m ago
You might want to look up how denazification efforts worked post ww2.
guywithahat · 23m ago
Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive", while republicans were the ones who opposed book banning in schools. One would argue at least banning (often recently written) books with adult content/porn makes sense, saying a classic is "culturally insensitive" and banning it is just another word for political indoctrination
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tgv · 37m ago
Banning Mein Kampf was not on the bad side of history. It's rarely black and white.
asadotzler · 17m ago
Which books on the list covered in this article are equivalents of Mein Kampf in mid-century Germany? I'll save you the effort. The answer is "none of them." That makes it pretty black and white for me. There's not some massive overlap here that makes it all shades of gray. The two situations and the works of literature are entirely different and the Germany case is an abberation, an exception, and hardly a good basis for drawing global conclusions. It is black and white. Either you're for or against the wholesale banning of books or you're for it. Countering with "but this one time in this one place" is hardly convincing.
fabian2k · 3m ago
It's not actually banned in Germany. Though I think the only edition you can buy here is annotated, which does seem like a good idea.
JohnMakin · 6m ago
The Bible has tons of sexual content, yet something tells me the same parents appealing to get these books removed take no issue with that one.
briandw · 34m ago
Very few people that I talk to are truly in favor of free speech as a principle. They are either in favor of free speech in cases like this, where christians are banning books that they like, and not in favor when it’s about political correctness (misgendering, banning words, hate speech etc) or vice versa.
Free speech for me and not for thee seems to order of the day.
treetalker · 5m ago
I, for one, am shocked — shocked! — that the Florida Legislature and the DeSantis administration would violate the Constitution of the United States of America. Clearly some rogue agent in the library deep state must be to blame.
whimsicalism · 44m ago
i was a voracious reader as a child (and still largely am) and can’t remember ever touching a school library (most of the books stocked were stupid). wonder if this is different in Florida
Refreeze5224 · 21m ago
Only fascists ban books.
xrd · 1h ago
This is not just a few rogue FL citizens trying to ban books. This is spearheaded by the Florida government itself. The education commissioner is Anastasios Kamoutsas, appointed by DeSantis. Given that a culture war is a great way to market yourself to voters, expect appeals.
guywithahat · 28m ago
Maybe, but at the same time there is a serious issue with adult/sexual content in fictional books with no real historical or scientific value. Saying kids have to have access to books about how to perform bj's is a losing argument. If a parent wants their kid to have access to such books they should buy them themselves (although I'd like to think CPS would give them a ring), and we shouldn't conflate what's obscene for an 6 year old to what's obscene for a 30 year old
Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.
also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.
To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.
Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.
Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.
But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques
These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.
That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.
Stop defending tyranny.
You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.
To have empathy with a view is not condoning it
From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.
It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.
I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.
There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.
While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.
That being said...
It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.
So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.
People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.
My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.
I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.
We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.
It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.
There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey.
--------------------
Genesis 16:4 – “And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived…” (Abram and Hagar)
Genesis 29:23 – “…and he went in unto her.” (Jacob and Leah)
Genesis 30:4 – “…and Jacob went in unto her.” (Jacob and Bilhah)
Ruth 4:13 – “…and he went in unto her, and the LORD gave her conception…” (Boaz and Ruth)
Variants & related euphemisms
Genesis 38:16 – “…he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee…” (Judah and Tamar)
2 Samuel 11:4 – “And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her…” (David and Bathsheba)
Leviticus 18:6+ – “uncover nakedness” is repeated as a sexual euphemism.
Genesis 38:9 – “…when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground…” (Onan; explicit ejaculation reference).
https://oklahoma.gov/education/newsroom/2025/march/despite-c...
The Constitution only applies if there are people able and willing to enforce it.
This lets people at the top do whatever now since the eventual consequences (if any) are way out in the future and punitive to the gains they get now.
Its like being a bank robber with a Ferrari when the cops are stuck using horse-and-buggies.
My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another.
Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.
For example, a writer could call a woman a "Jezebel" without any expository context, assuming that the reader would know what that meant.
Thus the bible should be in every high school and higher education library.
But I don't see any reason a library can't have various books from antiquity, for reference at least. Probably multiple editions or translations of each too.
Without the bible, people still have dictionaries if they don't understand words or references. Or they could use Google. I don't see why some books would be "too crucial" not to ban in a law banning books intended to protect kids.
If anything, I find it easier to defend a ban on religious books in (public) schools.
Having a book available does not mean promoting it or establishing it as a religion.
“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”
Rapin' is ok if she doesn't belong to someone else (theft) and you have $50. Also HIS penalty is that HE has to marry HER.
There does not seem to be a clear interpretation of this AFAIK. A lot of the other bits of Genesis have clear messages (e.g. the creation myth, the near sacrifice of Isaac, etc.) but not all necessarily. It might be that there were no other men and they were desperate for children.
The people who fight for free speech in these cases, devoting time and money to it, and have real meaningful effect, self-describe in more ordinary ways.
In what way do you consider this similar to laws enforced by courts and police and the full legal system?
They are fighting to get different books (less Eurocentric, for the most part) into the curriculum, but they're not removing them from the library.
Breonna Taylor being summarily executed by government agents for Kenneth Walker exercising his natural right to night time home defense. This is the exact scenario the 2A enthusiasts are always grandstanding about - "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away", "From my cold, dead hands", etc. Any yet the response from the sheer majority of supposed 2A enthusiasts? Utter fucking silence, if not outright support for the jackboots.
The government deciding standards for content it purchase is neither tyranny nor fascism. You are free to purchase as much controversial or sexually explicit material as you see fit.
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It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free. It seems to me like compelled speech to require the government to stock certain books. As this pertains to schools, I don't understand how the government doesn't have the same right to control the curriculum as it does in any other case. e.g. it is not a violation of a teacher's right to free speech to order them not to teach flat earth theory in public schools because that teacher is an employee and not on their own time. Same as my employer can restrict my speech while on the job without violating my rights.
Similarly, you are also wrong about this compelling the government to stock certain books, that's not on the table at all.
You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question, which in this case is the state whose budget and laws are controlled by the legislature.
It's the school librarian, who purchases books from their vendor lists. Depending on the school, the school board might vote to put a selection policy in place for the librarian. A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't kosher is that taken to its extreme, the government could ban all books that aren't the King James Bible without explicitly adopting a pro-King James Bible policy. And if that's the only kind of book they stock in the library, then children who want to check out books are going to be reading literature with a certain kind of slant to it.
Replace the King James Bible with whatever you personally wouldn't want kids to be reading, e.g. the Quran or the Kama Sutra.
Is driving 100mph down the highway OK as long as you slow down right before the known speed trap? The system worked?
An example of this is FIRE -- which was massively criticized by progressives for suing colleges over anti-conservative speech codes, DEI statements, etc. But FIRE has behavred in a princicpled manner and has sued conservatives and the Trump administration over civil liberties violations.
Even the word "libertarian" doesn't mean "anarchist" in America as it does everywhere else, to refer to the most far-left you take take political ideology. Instead it refers to a deeply right-wing ideology obsessed with corporatocracy.
In the UK and I understand libertarianism to mean an extreme free market position, usually in the belief that markets will fix problems unregulated. I think the UK definition is less extreme than the US one but on similar lines.
Libertarianism is an application of right-wing ideology subtracting the State. Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies, but for another example, just because Nazism advocated for nationalizing industries doesn't mean it has anything beyond that in common with Marxist Leninist Communism which advocates for the same.
Yes, that's the philosophy. All the rest of what you said is just listing different predictions of what will happen after you get rid of the state. Once you get rid of the state, there is no authority to enforce the "mutual aid or communism" so that isn't a political philosophy. It's just a prediction of what will people will do under their own free will in the absence of a compelling authority.
Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution.
The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"?
Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"?
I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library.
For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration.
I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
Any other claims are bad-faith "won't somebody please think of the children" nonsense.
Project 2025 defines all transgender content as inherently pornographic. These censors are not being subtle about their true aims.
Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties.
EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess:
>A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment.
>Judge Mendoza disagreed.
>“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
Come on, now.
> HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book
Florida cannot ban private libraries from stocking books with sexual content. But librarians are government employees buying books and maintaining libraries with government money. The state can direct its employees what kinds of books to make available for the same reason any private entity can do so.
This might be different if libraries were neutral venues for authors to come present about their books. In that case you might have a case about viewpoint discrimination. But the first amendment can’t force the government to buy particular books and make them available to the public.
There is less and less any reason for them to try to hide their true intentions and can just be more open with their blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc etc.
Side note: was quite surprised to see a reference to Cloud Atlas. While not surprised given the entire point of that book, it makes me wonder how much these people are actually reading these books and what that looks like.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/north-dakota-books-obs...
Rather than big government via vague laws that allow random people to control everything in schools.
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