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.
“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!”
Obscene books like the Bible?
So more wasting tax money for posturing and campaigning and not solving any actual 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.”
This isn’t posturing, it’s having a direct impact on the education of children in this country. This is them creating more problems.
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).
Whay they wanted to be able to say it in public without consequences.
They need to just get on with it, we all know what they want to do
Shit or get off the pot
We need a massive bible book burning event.
guns
Wow, I did Nazi that coming.
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 ☹️
I heard there’s one book in there that talks about a pair of sisters who get their father drunk so they can take turns raping him. Are they banning that one?
wow, the bible is fucked up.
The Bible doesn’t portray it as a good thing, and considers their descendants cursed.
A large portion of the Bible is: “here’s all the ways people can be nasty, don’t be like them”.
Whoa, so you’re saying we shouldn’t ban books that have questionable themes if those themes teach a lesson?
Yes, I don’t support banning books. One of the books in the Bible can even be considered pornographic (Song of Songs), but it has been considered a model for a healthy relationship.
Have you read that steamy story about how Lot’s two daughters drugged him and rode their father’s cock?
So appropriate for kids.
Exactly the one I’m taking about.
So which of the banned books are you saying should be banned?
I’m not supporting banning books, just pointing that the Bible itself considers the events of that story bad.
Well, that depends on how you interpret it. I’d say quite a number of people interpret it incorrectly.
It doesn’t matter to book-banners whether or not the thing they don’t like is portrayed as positive or negative. Just the fact that it’s there is enough for them.
But do you know what it does portray as a good thing? Slavery!
Also no. It allowed servitude to pay off debts, but all debts were supposed to be forgiven after 7 years, and so it was strictly limited.
Where do you think the ideas that all humans are equal and deserve equal rights that reduced slavery in modern times come from?
Abraham had sex with his (wife’s) slave Hagar to produce Ishmael – and both Hagar and Ishmael were then exiled after Abraham was able to conceive with his wife and produce Isaac.
Certainly not the kind of values I’d want for my family.
Also treated by the Bible as something bad.
Can you point to the verse that condemns that behavior?
Where do you think the ideas that all humans are equal and deserve equal rights that reduced slavery in modern times come from?
Definitely not the Bible, which tells women to be subservient to their husbands and enslaved people to obey their masters. I am utterly uninterested in the moral lessons of a book written by people who endorse debt slavery. Which, I guess still needs to be pointed out, is bad! Even if it’s “only” 7 years!
The equality of women is indeed a point where the bible failed, but you can’t do everything right at once. I’m not a fan of the bible, but in it’s days, it was a good book that taught good values. Values that were better than society was at the time and it really improved society.
I understand your position, but I respectfully urge you to study more history, all modern western ideas of universal human rights are based on or heavily influenced by the Bible. Dominion by Tom Holland, despite the terrible name, is a good source on the subject.
Also, sure, we are partially past it, but considering that until 300 years ago almost everybody considered slavery a natural right, a 3000 years old law limiting servitude to 7 years is VERY progressive.
You are not convincing my queer trans ass there is anything worth studying in there to guide people morally. I had that inflicted on me for the first two decades of my life and literally have PTSD from it.
The history can be interesting, and it’s something people accomplished in spite of what is in that book, not because of it.
Not that I think anything in the Bible can be taken at face value, but especially numbers and doubly so, the number 7.
World created in 7 days. Forgive others 7 times or 70*7. Etc etc. There’s no reason to believe the law of the land was literally a 7 year limit on slavery.
Still bad, but servitude =/= slavery.
7 in the Bible is usually a symbol for completeness. The 70*7 specifically is meant to be “unending”.
It is very likely to really be a 7 years limit to debts.
And I would love if the Bible-thumping politicians proposed this debt limit for modern times, but they are all just hypocrites.
Still bad, but servitude =/= slavery.
My friend, biblical scholars disagree with you. Your holy book is very clear on this subject, and I would implore you to do a little research before saying shit like this.
7 in the Bible is usually a symbol
It is very likely to really be a 7 years limit
Is it just me, or these don’t seem to jive with each other.
Where do we think those ideas come from? The way you say that makes it sound like you don’t believe anyone could come to that idea without that specific religion’s religious text. That projection is, by far, probably the most frightening thing in this thread.
People are fully capable of being good without being forced to. Yea, most are stupid and plenty are nasty but to act like the ideas of baseline human freedoms must have come from the bible is so weird.
I’m not saying it’s not possible, but that’s how it happened in the Western world.
Would it later on happen “naturally” without it? Maybe; hard to say, we can only speculate since it’s not how it went.
But even from a “Christian” perspective, I would agree, yes it would; these values align with God’s will and He would have put these ideas in peoples’ heads even if the Bible didn’t exist.
Geez, so much for getting free will, eh?
There were scores of Christians who thought slavery was great. If the bible was really the ticket into being against it then it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Instead we get The Americas™, a collection of stolen lands turned into a mire of plantations and now into prisons built on making said the prisoners work for pennies to prop up the rest of the country while many more “free” people are below the poverty line despite putting in their 40+ hours of hard, often physical, labour. Even people that are “paid decently” aren’t getting their fair share. Slavery coexists with the bible just fine, and in fact thrives more in more religious regions.
Lol, bud… Just Google “slavery in the Bible”
You’re in denial.
It allowed servitude to pay off debts
so, debt slavery?
Technically servitude is not the same as slavery, but still bad.
Considering that until 300 years ago most people considered slavery to be a natural right, a 3000 years old law limiting it to at most 7 years was VERY progressive.
but its practically the same thing. how progressive of the bible.
I mean, it’s a 1000 year old book. Slavery was accepted and normal in those days.
Slavery has never been acceptable, and I would expect a “holy book” meant to be a model for morality, regardless of when it is written, to at the very least be ambivalent on the topic of owning other humans as property.
Actually, that’s too generous. If I were to follow the teachings of a book, it would need to be explicitly anti-slavery. Something that would be particularly important in a time where slavery is “accepted and normal.” And really, a super fucking low bar.
We’ve got 10 commandments. At least 2 of them are about Yahweh being jealous of other gods, and yet none of them are about slavery.
Jesus could have easily said, “don’t own people as property,” and yet he didn’t.
No, he actually specifically outlined rules for owning and punishing your slaves. He (more than, imo) tacitly approves of slavery.
If you want to have this argument, you’re gonna lose.
Slavery was very much and accepted socio economical practice in those days. The mentioning the bible does are often not reminiscent of the 18th century slavery we’re all familiar with. Slavery I’m those days was often a kind of servitude, for a couple years, tto pay off debt. The bible recognises that for what it is and tries to humanise slavery by saying things like to treat your slaves as your brother
You should probably take a step back and realize you’re defending slavery. That’s gross. You should be ashamed.
You can try to justify it all you want, but the fact is that it was just as unacceptable then as it is now, and an all-knowing, all-caring god should understand that no problem.
Regardless of the socio- economic conditions.
And yeah, it’s not like Jesus was well known for upsetting the socio-economic status quo or anything… It’s not like he fashioned his own whip to drive money changers from the temple.
B b b but money changing in the temple was the accepted practice in those days!
Slavery has never been acceptable, and I would expect
a “holy book”the Constitution of the United States meant to be a model formoralitygovernment, regardless of when it is written, to at the very least be ambivalent on the topic of owning other humans as property.Cool trick.
I agree.
apologetics in 2025 makes people sound insane.
It’s also somehow worse than old school apologetics from like 2007, at least those ones put some thought into it and generally acknowledged that society changed.
You have to go pretty far into the Bible to even get to the first non-incestuous relationship.
How do they know something is obscene? None of them know how to read.
I’ve yet to discover a conservative “Christian” that possesses even a passing familiarity with their own self proclaimed testaments.
Like seriously, you claim to take your belief seriously, it’s 1 fucking book! It’s not a page turner I grant them, but it’s ONE book.
Unfortunately there’s a website that tells them specific books and passages to challenge.
By “obscene” they mean a guy flirts with a guy. Meanwhile a full on sex scene isn’t “obscene” so long as it’s heterosexual
Conservatives simply hate free speech.
The Constitution according to Republicans:
We The People…words words GET TO HAVE AS MANY GUNS AS WE WANT words words…The End.
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.
Wonderful… I wonder when this country is going to have Kristallnacht.
Honestly, the best thing for the planet right now would be not to have a US
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.
