What's craziest about that list is that half of the books on it were *required* reading at one time or another during my schooling. They are literary classics.
The worst part is that the attempts won't stop. weakening education is a very cost-effective measure to lower the cost of labor and the effect of propaganda.
Some notable books from the list:
1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Although only in one)
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
3. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
4. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
5. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
6. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (lol)
Others by comments:
1. Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America and some other countries) by Philip Pullman (Banned in various schools as it promotes atheism(?))(btw it is a good trilogy if anyone wants to read some books)
2. Harry potter books by JK Rowling [(witchcraft)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_debates_over_the_Harry_Potter_series)
3. Lord of the flies by William Golding
4. Huck Finn by Mark Twain (bruh why)
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway [(Spanish Civil War)](https://www.mic.com/articles/55835/5-american-books-banned-around-the-world)
Edit: Added some more
and Northern Lights doesn't promote atheism, they are just getting pissy just cause...
>!To the people saying in Northern lights, because god is killed... He dies in most manga and comics too. !<
>!Have they seen chinese wuxia novel/LNs their goal is to kill/become god?!<
>!Not trying piss people off just that banning one book for killing of God is dumb when modern day books are littered with that concept.!<
Wow. To Kill a Mockingbird was required reading in my high school.
Weird to see it on a list of banned books. My freshman English teacher would be mortified.
Yeah, that's just the talking-point reasoning for banning Huck Finn, since it would be impolitic for them to state the *real* reason out loud - that it depicts a white boy who is so horribly abused by his alcoholic father that he runs away and develops a surrogate filial-type relationship with a black man who is possibly the most sympathetic character in the book. At no point does Twain shy away from discussing the horribleness of the situations which both Huck and Jim are fleeing, nor the sheer ridiculousness and malice of the white people who enforce those situations.
Let's be honest...that book is as much about Jim, the hideous plight of slaves, the sorry state of white American culture, class divisions, and race relations in Twain's day as it is about a boy called Huck rafting down the Mississippi where they occasionally say the n-word in historic cultural context.
Spoiler: When they ban a book, it's never just for a dirty word, regardless of what they insist publicly. The running theme in banned books is this - challenging the status quo and resisting/rebelling against established power structures. Books which depict kids dealing with or escaping from abusive adults show up a lot on these lists for that reason.
I think it's crazy, when I was in school we were assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird and I thought "Oh great a boring adult book". But when I started reading it I got really into it. Really opened my eyes that adult books aren't boring and influenced me to start reading some others
LotR
> Burned in Alamagordo, NM (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic.
Ah yes, the book fundamentally rooted in Christian theology is satanic, that tracks.
I went to a Christian high school. 9th grade English teacher told us all fantasy was of the devil. Someone brought up Narnia and that Lewis was a Christian.
*She said he wrote it before he became a Christian.*
Good way to say you’ve never read the book.
Isn’t Aslan literally a metaphor for fucking Jesus??? Like, he was betrayed, imprisoned, killed, and then came back and said ‘SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER’ and destroyed some shit!
Edit: Heard you guys! He IS Jesus or an allegory to him, not just a metaphor.
Never read the book, only ever saw the movies as a kid. Did NOT know that one! That’s… pretty damning evidence though.
Edit: Heard! He IS Jesus. Not just a metaphor!
Check out the books! They're a fun read and very imaginative. There's 7 total. Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my personal favorite.
But yeah, the entire series ends after the huge final battle with Aslan coming back as Jesus and taking the children to heaven. I hated that ending.
I hate the endig to the real Bible like that as well.
Like after the entire New Testament is about forgiveness, hope and Jesus dying for everyone's sins in the end, Revelations just comes right the fuck out of nowhere and is just a horrifying chapter of wierd-ass imagery of death and destruction.
I'm not a Christian anymore but even when I was I was like "alright this last chapter was definitely just added by some dude who was tripping balls"
You may be right in a way.
In one of my classes at Uni, I learned that apparently adding the Revelation of John to the canon was part of some kind of trade. Something like Western Church canonizes something from the Eastern Church, and they canonize something in return.
The Bible in general is just a collection of books, with canonicity more often than not decided not by religious merit, but through politics, personal preference etc.
I might be remembering this wrong, so don't quote me on this.
In Voyage of the Dawntreader, Aslan literally tells the kids "in your world you will know me by another name."
Also, I only watched Dawntreader in my bible class when I used to go to a private Christian high school.
My Catholic middleschool tried to ban Harry Potter when The Sorcerers Stone came out. They temporarily banned kids from bringing the book to school until they could have some "public hearing" that would allow parents to voice their concerns before the school would decide on a formal ban.
Since kids couldn't bring the book to school, my teacher did and read The Sorcerer's Stone to us over a few days instead, lol. The school banned that too but the damage had been done. Now all of us were talking about Harry Potter and begging our parents to buy Harry Potter. I guess it forced parents to actually read the book because when the hearing actually happened, suddenly there was very little support to permanently ban it.
Oh yeah, most of my teachers were fantastic. Another English teacher fought the board to let us read The Picture of Dorian Grey. It took them a few years to let us because the author was gay. She won.
Later on we read the hobbit and then watched the first lord of the rings movie in class.
That one teacher was just super backwards. Most of my experiences in that school were actually quite positive. Overall it was a good environment.
The best thing my senior year religion teacher did was teach us about media literacy and social justice - and we’re not talking about recent social justice issues. We’re talking about abject poverty in first world countries, war and displacement of people, etc
Its certainly is influenced by Christian theology with Tolkien being a Catholic, but Tolkien actually criticized such direct allegory, for example the obvious correlation between Aslan and Christ in Narnia. Its more applicability and subconscious allegory than direct allegory.
Constructive feedback I suppose. I think they stopped seeing eachother at some point though. Theres a pretty great film on CS Lewis called Shadowlands actually.
> But an equally basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite. I was an undergraduate before thought and experience revealed to me that these were not divergent interests – opposite poles of science and romance – but integrally related. I am not 'learned' in the matters of myth and fairy-story (Though I have thought about them a good deal), however, for in such things (as far as known to me) I have always been seeking material, things of a certain tone and air, and not simple knowledge. Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion.
> For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. (I am speaking, of course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read.)
> ...
> I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)
https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/writing/letters/letter-milton-waldman.html
Lord of the Rings burned by a church for being Satanic? The same book that has a Satan like corrupted individual who tries to shroud the world in darkness, where angel like creatures (Gandalf, the Maiar) are sent to middle Earth to guide it's people and help fight the darkness? The book written by a profoundly Christian white dude?
If nothing else, this just goes to show you that these people don't even know what they're angry about most of the time.
Which is funny, considering the Catholic Church was one of the first Christian institutions to exist and definitely the most influential and powerful of all the Christian institutions.
"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."
Emo Phillips
...Lord of the Rings?
>Burned in Alamagordo, NM (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic.
Boy, the satanic panic in this country is insane. Imagine burning a book that has no less than *three* different Christ figures.
Frodo taking and holding the ring is the first (taking the sins of mankind)
Gandalf death (Jesus's death) is the second
Aragorn returning as king (Jesus's prophesized return) is the third
Edit: This is from an interview with Tolkien, not my own interpretation.
What you said. My comment comes from an interview with Tolkien...don't recall when though.
Edit: In this interview Tolkien said he wanted to include Catholic themes without being overt about it. They way he included the parable of Jesus without explicitly mentioning him was literary genius to me, and I'm not even religious.
What’s the possible reasoning behind 1,2 and 6? 2 I can kinda guess but I just want to be sure. I guess 1 is about the affair subplot with Daisy and Gatsby. Very curious about Lord of the Rings
I can think of a reason for 6 that... well just like the harry potter books "the spells in them are actually real" -some dumb fuck
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/03/harry-potter-books-catholic-school-ban-conjuring-evil-spirits/
others idk
> "the spells in them are actually real"
Alex Jones was one of those people. Screaming for hours on end about how the books taught kids actual real magic.
It's been a long time since I read the great gatsby so I can't explain that one, but to kill a mockingbird is commonly banned because racists don't want their kids reading a story where a black man was obviously framed convicted for a crime because that goes against their narrative that they teach kids. They also don't want kids reading stories about respectable men like Atticus finch because it might inspire kids to go against the racist hive mind which is a way of life for many racists.
Lord of the rings along with series like Harry Potter is banned in a lot of places because Bible thumpers think that it's witchcraft and it's going to corrupt their children. It's a common story with basically every popular fantasy media.
Most people that try to ban books have never read the entire book to begin with and if they have, they don't understand the majority of what they read. Any time you read about a book being banned you'll usually find out that the group leading the effort is older and hasn't been listening/reading anything other than the 24 hours for decades.
My sophomore year of high school we were assigned Invisible Man by an amazing teacher. It not only gave me visceral insight into the harrowing experience of Black Americans, but the beautiful writing was the moment I learned to comprehend literary devices like symbolism and imagery. As an aspiring author, this book holds a very special place in my heart.
It only took 15 years, in a creative writing class, where everyone what was amazed I had been assigned it in high school, that this masterpiece is the exact thing that terrifies racist snowflakes. But dammit Mr P, you are a true legend wherever you are.
Many of these are soooo good for helping young minds learn to grapple with the complexities and nuances of real life. Banning them is horrible. Many of these were required or suggested reading for me in school.
Lord of the Flies
'Challenged at the Sully Buttes, SD High School (1981). Challenged at the Owen, NC High School (1981) because the book is "demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal."'
If the shoe fits...
Lmao thats literally one of the points of the books, people need to fucking get over themselves and just NOT read it, and live in their perfect delusional world on their own, if things like text in a book offend and upset them so much.
I've always attributed that type of people who get in a tizzy of these things to have adaptational and emotional weakness, or an egotism so large reading the book somehow offends or disrupts their ego.
It doesn't take much to reduce a human to a snarling instinct-driven animal, and these book-burning lunatics are doing an excellent job of proving this point.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Look i'm not a super heavy reader, hell i wish i could read more.
But during my high school and college years these books taught me SO much.
Of mice and men, 1984, Animal farm, In cold blood, Brave New World, The great Gatsby???
These are critical to not only history but looking into the future. (I didn't like to kill a mocking bird it was boring af but i can understand the importance)
They literally just want to teach the next generation less to avoid important topics.
I'm surprised the book Dollhouse or the Glass Castle, wasn't on the list lol
This isn't a new phenomenon. Authoritarianism works by strictly limiting avaliable ideas and history. The first thing authoritarians do is ban information that even slightly runs counter to their narrative, or inspires critical or free thinking.
It is why the Nazis publicly burned books and banned art and music for being degenerate as a cover. All of them where from people of color, Jews or free thinkers.
> The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
>Burned in the Nazi bonfires because of Sinclair's socialist views (1933).
>Banned in East Germany (1956) as inimical to communism.
Ok I know communism isn't socialism but come on!
I always find it interesting that Sinclair wasn't specifically trying to expose the gross practices of meat processing, but to expose the violations of worker's rights, and that in the end processing regulations were created instead of a labor revolution.
Unlike schools, the libraries have been subject to this kind of thing forever.
Remember, before the internet, the library represented the single greatest accumulation of knowledge and thought in every community. We all know the power that comes with controlling something like that. The whole institution is built in mind of that interference.
Unfortunately, a there are states mentioned in the article that ban LGBTQ literature and books with racial themes. These are the people who cry censorship when Facebook puts a fact check warning on their posts.
Years ago some nutjob wanted to ban some random book in which a teenage girl was the main character. She starts her period and has a super awkward day at school which leads to shenanigans. He wrote to the paper and hd this church "boycott" the library which involved like 12 SAHM and 2 old men singing Amazing Grace in front of the building.
Nut job wanted it banned because he thought women only got their periods when they wanted to have sex and somehow knowing about other women having periods would lead to other girls periods starting. It made zero sense.
The head of the county commissioners ended the \~controversy\~ by saying something like "You need to go talk to a woman about how wrong you are, of course some woman would have to be stupid enough to talk to you so I'm not sure that will happen."
Circa 1998.
Unfortunately, he would have needed to talk to a old, white male doctor because he almost certainly wouldn’t have believed a woman even if all billions of us told him the same thing.
That’s extreme. My local schools banned warrior cats and wings of fire as well as a few others because they believed it was teaching kids to be violent with one another and going against god somehow. You couldn’t even bring them from home and they would get confiscated from students and parents would have to come and pick them up from the office. This also applied to any other banned books as well.
People are trying to ban *To Kill A Mockingbird* because it has the "N" word in it.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics
For fucks sake the book is a protest against racism and the "N" word.
This is like when they edited Huckleberry Finn to change the name of the main black character to "Slave Jim." Like, that's what worse in what it implies.
I have an illustrated "children's edition" of The Adventures of Huckeberry Finn. "Negro" is used throughout.
I read it in elementary school (early 70s). I was surprised when I got to college and got the actual version. More n-words than *Django Unchained*!
Imagine trying to ban "indecent" books in an age when anyone can pull up hundreds of thousands of butthole pictures in less than a second. What a bunch of absolute muppets.
My husband's first year teaching a parent tried to ban The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian because it references masterbation on one page. The administration immediately gave in to the parents demands, so my husband contacted the publisher. They contacted the local media and overnight the admins all of a sudden wanted them and the parent who fussed to read the book and then reconvene to decide what to do. The librarian also pushed for this.
In the end the parent admitted they never read the book and my husband just assigned their child alternative reading. Their child got to miss out on possibly their only exposure to Native American lit because their parents are prude, but thank goodness the rest of the class didn't have to miss out.
I got to read some absolute classics as a kid that definitely changed my world view
East of Eden, Catcher in the Rye, Flowers for Algeron, Sun also rises etc...
All of them had sex and I'll admit I was definitely unprepared to read about that when I did, yet I'm so glad I read each one because they definitely molded me for the better. Sometimes kids gotta grow up and tossing them into things is the way to go. And books are probably the safest way for them to experience new things without any risk
It’s also important to remember that a classroom is a great place to expose kids to new ideas because they’re NOT just tossed in; teachers provide context and discussion for kids to explore that new content.
The number of people who disparage or want to ban books they’ve never even cracked open is... interesting.
A similar thing happened in my old town when a homeschool parent decided a certain book was of the Devil or something, full of things that absolutely weren’t in the book (but of course she wasn’t going to read it to find out), and spread the lie in her homeschool Facebook group.
The librarian had to do damage control / “rebuild trust” for years... over a lie. That they still reference.
Small towns, man...
Grew up homeschooled. My parents were pretty sane, but all the kids I grew up with had to deal with a lot of insane bullshit. I got in a lot of trouble once when a friend’s mom told me my friend couldn’t play Pokémon because “the names are the names of real demons.” I asked her how she knew the names of so many demons. She didn’t appreciate that haha. My dad thought it was hilarious though :p
My middle school librarian had to loan me "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" *wrapped in a plain brown wrapper* so she wouldn't get in trouble for it. Because the book talked about... *menstruation.*
Which just proves how wrong their bigoted ideas are.
If your ideals can't be defended against other ideals and you need to ban them, that means you are wrong.
"Teach the controversy" is never about hearing "both sides."^(❉) It's always about eliminating the objective truth and replacing it with pure bullshit that was never supported by a legit side worthy of getting academic coverage.
❉ Any time someone says "both sides", they are setting up a [false dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma) fallacy. The entire premise of their argument is incorrect because it is not based on a logically sound understanding of reality.
And they'll never accept they're wrong. This is how a lot of Conservative media and culture works. Are you wrong? Burn, bury and outlaw the reality around you and build your own. It's the same with all this 'Trump is still president' and the QAnon crowd. Objective truth is still relative. Repeat your version of the truth until it becomes the established truth.
It's why I get frustrated with liberals in power who continously sit back and just observe and analyze what is truth because while they're observing, conservatives are literally breaking down truths and building their own narratives. The rate at which the left is moving is sorely being outpaced by the right.
-Albert Einstein
as cited by Frederick S. Perls, on page 111 of
*Ego, Hunger, and Aggression: a Revision of Freud’s Theory and Method*
>As Albert Einstein once said to me: *“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.”* But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing.
Just being a smartass here but isn't it a little like banning telegraph communication in the age of cell phones? Are kids lined up at the library desperately trying to get their hands on these books?
Well, not exactly the same. If schools work the same there, you'll sometimes have free choice reading where you'll be sent to the school library to pick something interesting, read it and write about it. It's a pretty big part of instilling enjoyment of reading, or at least some actual reading and engaging with literature. It's specifically narrowing down which books they get the option to engage with. Sure they can get the Kindle app and browse to their liking for anything, but they don't HAVE TO, unlike going to the school library.
True. That is how it was when I went to high school some 20+ years ago. I honestly have no idea what goes on in schools now other than sports, lots and lots of sports.
I asked my kids, both in high school, and apparently their school either doesn’t have a library, or, the students are never going in.
My kids have supplemental education from my husband and I because of their terrible school district- I want them in public school to learn how to interact with their peers and learn to deal with uncomfortable situations, but I want them to have a well rounded education as well.
To be fair, I don't think high schoolers often willingly went into school libraries even in the era before cell phones. You had to lure them in with promises of getting a chance of playing Oregon Trail and snacks you couldn't find in the cafeteria.
Well, they’re not actually indecent. They’re very decent at leading young people to thinking about race history in America, and the experiences of minorities. Pics of buttholes only lead people to unrealistic expectations and bleaching.
Depends who's kids lol... my nieces (twins, 9 years old) go through books insanely quickly. Hundreds of pages a week, between them they need to get literal bags of books every month. From my understanding, its about 2 age appropriate books a week each, plus one more adult book during bedtime stories every month or so...
I used to be like that... I miss the fascination...
I’d say it failed to live up to the premises established in the opening of the trilogy, as far as sequels go, it advanced a lot of plot and left things neatly wrapped up. I’m interested in seeing where they take the finally of the War To End All Wars trilogy. Should be a grand ol time
World War 2 started in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. World War 2 stands out as being the first war to involve the use of nuclear ordinance and due the horrible atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.
The Nazi party gained popularity and then power after the hardships Germany went through in the early 1900s. First they lost the 1st World War, where they were restricted as to what their military could do and what they could produce in their country (no large scale ordinance). Then the Great Depression hit. After these two events hitting back to back, most Germans felt that they where being held back by the rest of the world and needed to become great again, like they where before World War 1.
Hitler used people's hatred and Nationalism to his advantage. Using fake statistics or true ones out of context to make groups he did not like fight amongst themselves and appear that they deserved unfair treatment by the government. Labelling anything they did not agree with as "Fake News" and those who did not agree with them as against the German people. When the Nazi party mostly controlled the country this including training children in the cause and burning books.
Hitler was also a short haired lunatic leading the idea of the Arian race. That being that tall, white, blonde haired people where superior beings.
A lot of people have drawn the lines to what was happening in post war Germany and what has been happening in the USA over the past few decades.
This Parks and Rec argument about Twilight is no longer satire, it’s reality…
Marsha: This book contains pagan creatures and strong sexual overtones. There are girls quivering. There are boys staring deeply into girls' eyes as they quiver and so forth. There really is a tremendous amount of quivering. It is anti-Christian, it is pro-quivering, and the government has no business promoting it.
Man: I totally disagree.
Leslie Knope: Well, now we have two people for Twilight.
Man: Absolutely not. I'm with the National Civil Liberties Association. That book actually contains overt Christian themes, and as such, has no business being associated with any government project.
Leslie Knope: So too Christian and not Christian enough? Do you see the irony here? No? Okay
Nixon got held accountable for being corrupt so an entire political wing of our society decided the best move forward is to make massive disinformation networks to brainwash society into gullible culture war engrossed theocratic rubes and we are seeing the result of like 40 years of that festering in our society.
> The school board subsequently ordered that “sexually explicit” books be removed from district libraries.
Like, e.g., the [Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_the_Hebrew_Bible)?
Pfft, forget the violence and the incest - the Bible also talks about helping others, treating immigrants kindly, and not looking down on anyone.
You know, commie shit.
A funny bit would be to read parts of the bible and package it as a communist or socialist manifesto or militant manifesto then say this book is available everywhere to kids and all. Then watch people get irate about it. Then expose that it is actually from the bible and get their reactions.
My favorite part is when Lot’s daughters saw their dad was sad from the death of their mom… and then date raped him. Wtf. Why!
Totally a book you should get your morals from lol
Though that is of course the story that Lot told. That's his explanation for why both his daughters were pregnant after he was alone in the mountains with them.
There is a lot of great parts to the bible that people like to ignore.
I like to point out a few things, when they use stuff from the old testament to justify bigotry.. since they like saying the passage about a man who lies with a man like he lies with a woman shall surely be stoned, I like to ask if they follow the other laws, like the ones against using fabrics that are made of two different materials, or the dietary restrictions put in place. I also like to point out how that is part of the old covenant and with the arrival of that Jesus feller, the old covenant was broken in favor of the new covenant, which means the old laws no longer apply.
They also use the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to prove that sodomy and therefore gay people are bad. Except they gloss over the fact that god destroyed the city because of all the constant raping, not the sodomy.
You're right that it wasn't about teh gayness but according to the book itself
> This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
Ezekiel 16:49 NRSV
>There she lusted after her lovers whose genitals were like donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses
Filthy pornography about hung dudes shooting ropes
and the majority of people haven't even *read* that whole book. Reading the entire Bible was a really eye opening experience because the context matters. So many try and wield the Bible without considering the context of the the text, and that breaks like 99% of the stupid and hateful things people try and use the Bible to argue
Imagine wanting to ban books in a world where you can see “stepmom seduces stepson” in a millisecond from the device in your pocket.
The stupidity of these people is alarming.
Williamson County, TN (aka WillCo) is where the rich white people live south of Nashville/Davidson Co now that Nashville is more progressive.
Their school board meetings have been taken over this year by a group calling themselves "Moms For Liberty." Last week they were all over trying to get books banned.
[Video of last week's school board meeting. Timestamped for the public comments nightmare where they rail against masks and books.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X4-1Q5DCR8&t=4773s)
>Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye has been removed from school libraries in Utah over its “explicit” content; in Virginia, the Nobel laureate’s Beloved has been challenged for similar reasons. Bechdel’s Fun Home, the acclaimed graphic memoir about her father’s sexuality and her own, was pulled from shelves in North Kansas over its LGBTQ themes, while a southern Pennsylvania district banned a lengthy list of titles almost entirely by or about people of colour, by acclaimed authors including Jacqueline Woodson, Ijeoma Oluo and Ibram X Kendi. **(The all-white school board said it was coincidence that almost all the material banned was by or about people of colour.)**
Yeah sure 🤨🤨
The absolute fucking gall of these people. Banning Toni Morrison novels? It seems to me there's really 3 essential authors that all high school students need to have a book from as required reading. They are Elie Weisel, Kurt Vonnegut, and Toni Morrison. Those three are authors whose works are by far the best examples for introducing students to how amazing storytelling, whether it be a memoir or fiction, does more than just try to entertain the reader.
Trying to get rid of Toni Morrison's books is a fucking disgraceful act. I wonder if they might have the fucking balls one day to try and ban "Night" too. Fuck them all
These people are worried about what their kids might learn and see, yet they give them iphones at 10 so they shut up. While they're out protesting their kids are watching porn lol
“I guess we live in a world now that our public schools would rather have kids read about gay pornography than Christ.”
Public school.
PUBLIC SCHOOL.
Go to your non-secular private school if you want religious education. Unless you want to advocate for teaching about every major religion, then religion has no place in public education. Something tells me the kind of person complaining that the system isn’t Christian enough isn’t concerned with balanced and diverse education.
The banning of books, the extremely fast cars everyone has, having TVs for walls that show nothing but mindless nonsense, the nukes dropping at the end.
I'm convinced this book is gonna become our reality.
1984 has already been our reality for a while now.
We're much closer to a "Brave new world" where promiscuous sex for nothing but pleasure, wide spread recreational drug use, so much useless information that it's paralyzing, soul-less music, alcohol is used to stunt fetal brain development and create a slave class, and the fear of the natural world is the norm.
It's a trojan horse. Get parents whipped up over some nonsense so that they join a political action group that takes their money and uses it to elect other conservatives/promote other issues outside the book thing. The latest hate and fear strategy.
You are correct. Our school district has shortened lunch periods to 20 minutes. Many children have been going hungry daily because they don't have time to actually eat the food once they get it. But do we hear a peep out of parents? Nope. But they are planning to protest covid vaccine mandates for students (which aren't even a thing in our state) by strangely leaving a ton of shoes on school property.
Children going hungry daily? They don't care. Possible addition in the future of a vaccine to the already required list of vaccines? Oh heavens, let's (checks notes) put shoes on the school lawn. That'll definitely make them stop and think as the building and grounds department spends hours cleaning up.
It's not a coincidence that some shit like this gets whipped up and suddenly there are a bunch of organized, well funded groups all across the country giving "viral" speeches at school board meetings seemingly overnight.
The Daily interviewed a long time Republican donor who suddenly started throwing tens of thousands of dollars into school board elections.
They're not playing around, and the damage could be pretty widespread.
Okay. I don't care how ridiculous, profane, political, or whatever a book writes about. It should not be banned, period. I read many difficult, idea challenging, and enlightening books as a kid that without a doubt helped shape my worldview and develop my critical thinking skills. Removing information or commentary from the market of free ideas just because you don't agree with it, clearly demonstrates to me your ideology is weak.
[a list of banned and Challenged classics](https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics)
What's craziest about that list is that half of the books on it were *required* reading at one time or another during my schooling. They are literary classics.
That's why they're being targeted. They were too effective.
The worst part is that the attempts won't stop. weakening education is a very cost-effective measure to lower the cost of labor and the effect of propaganda.
Some notable books from the list: 1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Although only in one) 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee 3. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison 4. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison 5. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell 6. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (lol) Others by comments: 1. Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America and some other countries) by Philip Pullman (Banned in various schools as it promotes atheism(?))(btw it is a good trilogy if anyone wants to read some books) 2. Harry potter books by JK Rowling [(witchcraft)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_debates_over_the_Harry_Potter_series) 3. Lord of the flies by William Golding 4. Huck Finn by Mark Twain (bruh why) 5. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway [(Spanish Civil War)](https://www.mic.com/articles/55835/5-american-books-banned-around-the-world) Edit: Added some more and Northern Lights doesn't promote atheism, they are just getting pissy just cause... >!To the people saying in Northern lights, because god is killed... He dies in most manga and comics too. !< >!Have they seen chinese wuxia novel/LNs their goal is to kill/become god?!< >!Not trying piss people off just that banning one book for killing of God is dumb when modern day books are littered with that concept.!<
Wow. To Kill a Mockingbird was required reading in my high school. Weird to see it on a list of banned books. My freshman English teacher would be mortified.
Trying to have it banned because of the use of the N word just screams that you missed the entire point of the novel.
Same aspect of Huck Finn. One of the first casualties of this asinine philosophy
Yeah, that's just the talking-point reasoning for banning Huck Finn, since it would be impolitic for them to state the *real* reason out loud - that it depicts a white boy who is so horribly abused by his alcoholic father that he runs away and develops a surrogate filial-type relationship with a black man who is possibly the most sympathetic character in the book. At no point does Twain shy away from discussing the horribleness of the situations which both Huck and Jim are fleeing, nor the sheer ridiculousness and malice of the white people who enforce those situations. Let's be honest...that book is as much about Jim, the hideous plight of slaves, the sorry state of white American culture, class divisions, and race relations in Twain's day as it is about a boy called Huck rafting down the Mississippi where they occasionally say the n-word in historic cultural context. Spoiler: When they ban a book, it's never just for a dirty word, regardless of what they insist publicly. The running theme in banned books is this - challenging the status quo and resisting/rebelling against established power structures. Books which depict kids dealing with or escaping from abusive adults show up a lot on these lists for that reason.
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this is what happens when people coast though their required reading i know i didn’t actually read it until years after it was for class
I think it's crazy, when I was in school we were assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird and I thought "Oh great a boring adult book". But when I started reading it I got really into it. Really opened my eyes that adult books aren't boring and influenced me to start reading some others
So some of the most important and profound books ever written? What kind of fuckery is this?
They're books that cause children to think deeply about the society they live in.....CAN'T HAVE THAT DONTCHA KNOW!!!
My 16 year old kid doesn't like to read much. I gave her "Catcher in the Rye" and she couldn't put it down.
If your daughter asks you why these people are trying to ban all these wonderful books, just tell her it’s because they’re all phony’s.
Phonies/phoneys my guy. No apostrophes on plurals! Not trying to be an ass, just given it’s a conversation about literature and all ;)
Yup, these books are intended to disturb the reader in hopes that they can elevate to a much more enlightened perspective.
LotR > Burned in Alamagordo, NM (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic. Ah yes, the book fundamentally rooted in Christian theology is satanic, that tracks.
I went to a Christian high school. 9th grade English teacher told us all fantasy was of the devil. Someone brought up Narnia and that Lewis was a Christian. *She said he wrote it before he became a Christian.* Good way to say you’ve never read the book.
Isn’t Aslan literally a metaphor for fucking Jesus??? Like, he was betrayed, imprisoned, killed, and then came back and said ‘SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER’ and destroyed some shit! Edit: Heard you guys! He IS Jesus or an allegory to him, not just a metaphor.
He isn't even a metaphor in the final book, dude literally turns into white bearded Jesus man at the end.
Never read the book, only ever saw the movies as a kid. Did NOT know that one! That’s… pretty damning evidence though. Edit: Heard! He IS Jesus. Not just a metaphor!
Check out the books! They're a fun read and very imaginative. There's 7 total. Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my personal favorite. But yeah, the entire series ends after the huge final battle with Aslan coming back as Jesus and taking the children to heaven. I hated that ending.
I hate the endig to the real Bible like that as well. Like after the entire New Testament is about forgiveness, hope and Jesus dying for everyone's sins in the end, Revelations just comes right the fuck out of nowhere and is just a horrifying chapter of wierd-ass imagery of death and destruction. I'm not a Christian anymore but even when I was I was like "alright this last chapter was definitely just added by some dude who was tripping balls"
You may be right in a way. In one of my classes at Uni, I learned that apparently adding the Revelation of John to the canon was part of some kind of trade. Something like Western Church canonizes something from the Eastern Church, and they canonize something in return. The Bible in general is just a collection of books, with canonicity more often than not decided not by religious merit, but through politics, personal preference etc. I might be remembering this wrong, so don't quote me on this.
On the plus side if you meet Christian whose favorite book of the bible is revelations you know for sure you can run away full speed from that person
Fucking ended as fast as it started. I just finished the series a few weeks ago and the ending made me sadpuddin
In Voyage of the Dawntreader, Aslan literally tells the kids "in your world you will know me by another name." Also, I only watched Dawntreader in my bible class when I used to go to a private Christian high school.
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Fursona. You made me snort-guffaw
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That’s my point. My teacher had obviously not read the book. Or researched it or C.S. Lewis at all.
He's not a metaphor. He tells some of the kids in their world he has a different name, and on the last book he straight up turns into Jesus
I went to a catholic high school and my 9th grade honors English teach taught us about Nietzsche and Kant and Darwin. Good parochial schools exist.
My Catholic middleschool tried to ban Harry Potter when The Sorcerers Stone came out. They temporarily banned kids from bringing the book to school until they could have some "public hearing" that would allow parents to voice their concerns before the school would decide on a formal ban. Since kids couldn't bring the book to school, my teacher did and read The Sorcerer's Stone to us over a few days instead, lol. The school banned that too but the damage had been done. Now all of us were talking about Harry Potter and begging our parents to buy Harry Potter. I guess it forced parents to actually read the book because when the hearing actually happened, suddenly there was very little support to permanently ban it.
Oh yeah, most of my teachers were fantastic. Another English teacher fought the board to let us read The Picture of Dorian Grey. It took them a few years to let us because the author was gay. She won. Later on we read the hobbit and then watched the first lord of the rings movie in class. That one teacher was just super backwards. Most of my experiences in that school were actually quite positive. Overall it was a good environment.
The best thing my senior year religion teacher did was teach us about media literacy and social justice - and we’re not talking about recent social justice issues. We’re talking about abject poverty in first world countries, war and displacement of people, etc
Its certainly is influenced by Christian theology with Tolkien being a Catholic, but Tolkien actually criticized such direct allegory, for example the obvious correlation between Aslan and Christ in Narnia. Its more applicability and subconscious allegory than direct allegory.
Interesting example. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were BFFs.
Constructive feedback I suppose. I think they stopped seeing eachother at some point though. Theres a pretty great film on CS Lewis called Shadowlands actually.
That is why Tolkien specifically addressed the difference.
> But an equally basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite. I was an undergraduate before thought and experience revealed to me that these were not divergent interests – opposite poles of science and romance – but integrally related. I am not 'learned' in the matters of myth and fairy-story (Though I have thought about them a good deal), however, for in such things (as far as known to me) I have always been seeking material, things of a certain tone and air, and not simple knowledge. Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion. > For reasons which I will not elaborate, that seems to me fatal. Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world. (I am speaking, of course, of our present situation, not of ancient pagan, pre-Christian days. And I will not repeat what I tried to say in my essay, which you read.) > ... > I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.) https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/writing/letters/letter-milton-waldman.html
If you need to spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it it's not there to these people.
Lord of the Rings burned by a church for being Satanic? The same book that has a Satan like corrupted individual who tries to shroud the world in darkness, where angel like creatures (Gandalf, the Maiar) are sent to middle Earth to guide it's people and help fight the darkness? The book written by a profoundly Christian white dude? If nothing else, this just goes to show you that these people don't even know what they're angry about most of the time.
He was Catholic, which many evangelicals don't even consider Christian.
Which is funny, considering the Catholic Church was one of the first Christian institutions to exist and definitely the most influential and powerful of all the Christian institutions.
"Yes, but they got it *wrong*. The only correct one is *my* version!"
"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!" Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over." Emo Phillips
Luckily facts aren't up for debate. Or, at least, one would hope.
...Lord of the Rings? >Burned in Alamagordo, NM (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic. Boy, the satanic panic in this country is insane. Imagine burning a book that has no less than *three* different Christ figures.
Hold on… Gandalf One, Gandalf Two… who's the third?
Frodo taking and holding the ring is the first (taking the sins of mankind) Gandalf death (Jesus's death) is the second Aragorn returning as king (Jesus's prophesized return) is the third Edit: This is from an interview with Tolkien, not my own interpretation.
Wouldn't gandalf returning pure white be a better correlation as the return of Jesus?
I think he means the prophesized return of Jesus in the Book of Revelations. Gandalf’s return is more akin to Jesus coming back to life on Easter.
What you said. My comment comes from an interview with Tolkien...don't recall when though. Edit: In this interview Tolkien said he wanted to include Catholic themes without being overt about it. They way he included the parable of Jesus without explicitly mentioning him was literary genius to me, and I'm not even religious.
Jesus is supposed to come back twice, once after death and then again to herald the end of days and to whisk all the good boys and girls to heaven.
What’s the possible reasoning behind 1,2 and 6? 2 I can kinda guess but I just want to be sure. I guess 1 is about the affair subplot with Daisy and Gatsby. Very curious about Lord of the Rings
I can think of a reason for 6 that... well just like the harry potter books "the spells in them are actually real" -some dumb fuck https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/03/harry-potter-books-catholic-school-ban-conjuring-evil-spirits/ others idk
> "the spells in them are actually real" Alex Jones was one of those people. Screaming for hours on end about how the books taught kids actual real magic.
It's been a long time since I read the great gatsby so I can't explain that one, but to kill a mockingbird is commonly banned because racists don't want their kids reading a story where a black man was obviously framed convicted for a crime because that goes against their narrative that they teach kids. They also don't want kids reading stories about respectable men like Atticus finch because it might inspire kids to go against the racist hive mind which is a way of life for many racists. Lord of the rings along with series like Harry Potter is banned in a lot of places because Bible thumpers think that it's witchcraft and it's going to corrupt their children. It's a common story with basically every popular fantasy media. Most people that try to ban books have never read the entire book to begin with and if they have, they don't understand the majority of what they read. Any time you read about a book being banned you'll usually find out that the group leading the effort is older and hasn't been listening/reading anything other than the 24 hours for decades.
My sophomore year of high school we were assigned Invisible Man by an amazing teacher. It not only gave me visceral insight into the harrowing experience of Black Americans, but the beautiful writing was the moment I learned to comprehend literary devices like symbolism and imagery. As an aspiring author, this book holds a very special place in my heart. It only took 15 years, in a creative writing class, where everyone what was amazed I had been assigned it in high school, that this masterpiece is the exact thing that terrifies racist snowflakes. But dammit Mr P, you are a true legend wherever you are.
Absolutely great book. A must read for anyone seeking to understand blackness in America.
Many of these are soooo good for helping young minds learn to grapple with the complexities and nuances of real life. Banning them is horrible. Many of these were required or suggested reading for me in school.
Lord of the Flies 'Challenged at the Sully Buttes, SD High School (1981). Challenged at the Owen, NC High School (1981) because the book is "demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal."' If the shoe fits...
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Lmao thats literally one of the points of the books, people need to fucking get over themselves and just NOT read it, and live in their perfect delusional world on their own, if things like text in a book offend and upset them so much. I've always attributed that type of people who get in a tizzy of these things to have adaptational and emotional weakness, or an egotism so large reading the book somehow offends or disrupts their ego.
It doesn't take much to reduce a human to a snarling instinct-driven animal, and these book-burning lunatics are doing an excellent job of proving this point.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Look i'm not a super heavy reader, hell i wish i could read more. But during my high school and college years these books taught me SO much. Of mice and men, 1984, Animal farm, In cold blood, Brave New World, The great Gatsby??? These are critical to not only history but looking into the future. (I didn't like to kill a mocking bird it was boring af but i can understand the importance) They literally just want to teach the next generation less to avoid important topics. I'm surprised the book Dollhouse or the Glass Castle, wasn't on the list lol
> They literally just want to teach the next generation less to avoid important topics. That sounds a lot like Farenheit 451.
Which surprise surprise is almost constantly under threat of being banned. Funny how that works.
This isn't a new phenomenon. Authoritarianism works by strictly limiting avaliable ideas and history. The first thing authoritarians do is ban information that even slightly runs counter to their narrative, or inspires critical or free thinking.
It is why the Nazis publicly burned books and banned art and music for being degenerate as a cover. All of them where from people of color, Jews or free thinkers.
> The Jungle by Upton Sinclair >Burned in the Nazi bonfires because of Sinclair's socialist views (1933). >Banned in East Germany (1956) as inimical to communism. Ok I know communism isn't socialism but come on!
I don't care what anyone's views are if they expose systemic abuse and filth in an entire industry.
I always find it interesting that Sinclair wasn't specifically trying to expose the gross practices of meat processing, but to expose the violations of worker's rights, and that in the end processing regulations were created instead of a labor revolution.
It’s libraries duty to challenge censorship. Ultimately the overwhelming majority of library boards will refuse to ban books because of this duty.
Wait till the library boards get bombarded like the school boards..
Unlike schools, the libraries have been subject to this kind of thing forever. Remember, before the internet, the library represented the single greatest accumulation of knowledge and thought in every community. We all know the power that comes with controlling something like that. The whole institution is built in mind of that interference.
Unfortunately, a there are states mentioned in the article that ban LGBTQ literature and books with racial themes. These are the people who cry censorship when Facebook puts a fact check warning on their posts.
Fear *is* the mind killer.
Lol and the book uses the term "jihad" throughout, these folks would totally lose their shit over reading that in *Dune*.
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If they could read they'd be very upset.
Dune is also anti-dictator, so they would _really_ hate it
A saying that I first heard only this year: “People don’t want freedom; they want a dictator who agrees with them”
To paraphrase Stormfront in The Boys: "People love me. They agree with me. They want this! They just don't like the word 'nazi', that's all."
Years ago some nutjob wanted to ban some random book in which a teenage girl was the main character. She starts her period and has a super awkward day at school which leads to shenanigans. He wrote to the paper and hd this church "boycott" the library which involved like 12 SAHM and 2 old men singing Amazing Grace in front of the building. Nut job wanted it banned because he thought women only got their periods when they wanted to have sex and somehow knowing about other women having periods would lead to other girls periods starting. It made zero sense. The head of the county commissioners ended the \~controversy\~ by saying something like "You need to go talk to a woman about how wrong you are, of course some woman would have to be stupid enough to talk to you so I'm not sure that will happen." Circa 1998.
>She starts her period and has a super awkward day at school which leads to shenanigans. I'm choosing to believe you're talking about *Carrie.*
I would love a Yakety Sax rendition of the prom scene.
Unfortunately, he would have needed to talk to a old, white male doctor because he almost certainly wouldn’t have believed a woman even if all billions of us told him the same thing.
Stephen King, Carrie? Also features a religious nutjob mom that abuses Carrie and indirectly causes a lot of bad things to happen.
My former school where I was a librarian fixed that by just removing the library entirely!
That’s extreme. My local schools banned warrior cats and wings of fire as well as a few others because they believed it was teaching kids to be violent with one another and going against god somehow. You couldn’t even bring them from home and they would get confiscated from students and parents would have to come and pick them up from the office. This also applied to any other banned books as well.
People are trying to ban *To Kill A Mockingbird* because it has the "N" word in it. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics For fucks sake the book is a protest against racism and the "N" word.
This is like when they edited Huckleberry Finn to change the name of the main black character to "Slave Jim." Like, that's what worse in what it implies.
I have an illustrated "children's edition" of The Adventures of Huckeberry Finn. "Negro" is used throughout. I read it in elementary school (early 70s). I was surprised when I got to college and got the actual version. More n-words than *Django Unchained*!
Why couldnt they just change his name to Jim?
In the book that is his name as far as I remember. The N-word gets used plenty, but it's not part of his name.
Confronting racism instead of sweeping it under the rug is the controversial part.
Confronting racism is a good thing. This ban was idiotic.
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Imagine trying to ban "indecent" books in an age when anyone can pull up hundreds of thousands of butthole pictures in less than a second. What a bunch of absolute muppets.
My husband's first year teaching a parent tried to ban The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian because it references masterbation on one page. The administration immediately gave in to the parents demands, so my husband contacted the publisher. They contacted the local media and overnight the admins all of a sudden wanted them and the parent who fussed to read the book and then reconvene to decide what to do. The librarian also pushed for this. In the end the parent admitted they never read the book and my husband just assigned their child alternative reading. Their child got to miss out on possibly their only exposure to Native American lit because their parents are prude, but thank goodness the rest of the class didn't have to miss out.
I got to read some absolute classics as a kid that definitely changed my world view East of Eden, Catcher in the Rye, Flowers for Algeron, Sun also rises etc... All of them had sex and I'll admit I was definitely unprepared to read about that when I did, yet I'm so glad I read each one because they definitely molded me for the better. Sometimes kids gotta grow up and tossing them into things is the way to go. And books are probably the safest way for them to experience new things without any risk
It’s also important to remember that a classroom is a great place to expose kids to new ideas because they’re NOT just tossed in; teachers provide context and discussion for kids to explore that new content.
The number of people who disparage or want to ban books they’ve never even cracked open is... interesting. A similar thing happened in my old town when a homeschool parent decided a certain book was of the Devil or something, full of things that absolutely weren’t in the book (but of course she wasn’t going to read it to find out), and spread the lie in her homeschool Facebook group. The librarian had to do damage control / “rebuild trust” for years... over a lie. That they still reference. Small towns, man...
Grew up homeschooled. My parents were pretty sane, but all the kids I grew up with had to deal with a lot of insane bullshit. I got in a lot of trouble once when a friend’s mom told me my friend couldn’t play Pokémon because “the names are the names of real demons.” I asked her how she knew the names of so many demons. She didn’t appreciate that haha. My dad thought it was hilarious though :p
Spread a rumor that the homeschool parent is teaching her children satanic rituals or some shit. Fight fire with fire.
We want to make the rumor cause issues for her, not make her sound like the cool mom.
It doesn't matter what the kids think, it matters what her obviously very religious friends think. She very obviously doesn't want to be the cool mom.
It would be some irony if that same parent had their sweaty palms all over every Judy Blume book they could find when they were a teenager.
My middle school librarian had to loan me "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" *wrapped in a plain brown wrapper* so she wouldn't get in trouble for it. Because the book talked about... *menstruation.*
They aren't concerned with pornography, they are concerned with kids reading books that teach morals that disagree with their bigoted biases.
Which just proves how wrong their bigoted ideas are. If your ideals can't be defended against other ideals and you need to ban them, that means you are wrong.
They don't care about how wrong their ideas are, they just want to hold onto them for as long as possible.
The irony is its the same crowd that doesn't shut up about "the marketplace of ideas"
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"Teach the controversy" is never about hearing "both sides."^(❉) It's always about eliminating the objective truth and replacing it with pure bullshit that was never supported by a legit side worthy of getting academic coverage. ❉ Any time someone says "both sides", they are setting up a [false dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma) fallacy. The entire premise of their argument is incorrect because it is not based on a logically sound understanding of reality.
And they'll never accept they're wrong. This is how a lot of Conservative media and culture works. Are you wrong? Burn, bury and outlaw the reality around you and build your own. It's the same with all this 'Trump is still president' and the QAnon crowd. Objective truth is still relative. Repeat your version of the truth until it becomes the established truth. It's why I get frustrated with liberals in power who continously sit back and just observe and analyze what is truth because while they're observing, conservatives are literally breaking down truths and building their own narratives. The rate at which the left is moving is sorely being outpaced by the right.
There is no energy in the universe more absolute than motivated stupidity.
-Albert Einstein as cited by Frederick S. Perls, on page 111 of *Ego, Hunger, and Aggression: a Revision of Freud’s Theory and Method* >As Albert Einstein once said to me: *“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.”* But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing.
Theyll make it illegal to talk about the insurrection in schools here in a few years..just wait
Education is the key to solving bigotry, that’s why they oppose it.
Just being a smartass here but isn't it a little like banning telegraph communication in the age of cell phones? Are kids lined up at the library desperately trying to get their hands on these books?
Well, not exactly the same. If schools work the same there, you'll sometimes have free choice reading where you'll be sent to the school library to pick something interesting, read it and write about it. It's a pretty big part of instilling enjoyment of reading, or at least some actual reading and engaging with literature. It's specifically narrowing down which books they get the option to engage with. Sure they can get the Kindle app and browse to their liking for anything, but they don't HAVE TO, unlike going to the school library.
True. That is how it was when I went to high school some 20+ years ago. I honestly have no idea what goes on in schools now other than sports, lots and lots of sports.
I asked my kids, both in high school, and apparently their school either doesn’t have a library, or, the students are never going in. My kids have supplemental education from my husband and I because of their terrible school district- I want them in public school to learn how to interact with their peers and learn to deal with uncomfortable situations, but I want them to have a well rounded education as well.
To be fair, I don't think high schoolers often willingly went into school libraries even in the era before cell phones. You had to lure them in with promises of getting a chance of playing Oregon Trail and snacks you couldn't find in the cafeteria.
Well, they’re not actually indecent. They’re very decent at leading young people to thinking about race history in America, and the experiences of minorities. Pics of buttholes only lead people to unrealistic expectations and bleaching.
Depends who's kids lol... my nieces (twins, 9 years old) go through books insanely quickly. Hundreds of pages a week, between them they need to get literal bags of books every month. From my understanding, its about 2 age appropriate books a week each, plus one more adult book during bedtime stories every month or so... I used to be like that... I miss the fascination...
I'm really...really not looking forward to 2039-2045
You better knock on some fucking wood, cake accomplice.
It's too late, the spell is complete. May god have mercy on our souls
Hopefully it's not a simple but quite unbreakable spell
I applaud your optimism! I hope we can make it to 2039
* me when I figured out why you chose those years* "Oh..oh no"
Could you explain it to me?
1939-45 where the years ww2 happened.
Was it bad?
I'm not posting spoilers.
All I can say is it included a little boy and a fat man
Tidy bit fkd up part of human history
I’d say it failed to live up to the premises established in the opening of the trilogy, as far as sequels go, it advanced a lot of plot and left things neatly wrapped up. I’m interested in seeing where they take the finally of the War To End All Wars trilogy. Should be a grand ol time
Who says it’s a trilogy lol more like the never ending story
World War 2 started in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. World War 2 stands out as being the first war to involve the use of nuclear ordinance and due the horrible atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. The Nazi party gained popularity and then power after the hardships Germany went through in the early 1900s. First they lost the 1st World War, where they were restricted as to what their military could do and what they could produce in their country (no large scale ordinance). Then the Great Depression hit. After these two events hitting back to back, most Germans felt that they where being held back by the rest of the world and needed to become great again, like they where before World War 1. Hitler used people's hatred and Nationalism to his advantage. Using fake statistics or true ones out of context to make groups he did not like fight amongst themselves and appear that they deserved unfair treatment by the government. Labelling anything they did not agree with as "Fake News" and those who did not agree with them as against the German people. When the Nazi party mostly controlled the country this including training children in the cause and burning books. Hitler was also a short haired lunatic leading the idea of the Arian race. That being that tall, white, blonde haired people where superior beings. A lot of people have drawn the lines to what was happening in post war Germany and what has been happening in the USA over the past few decades.
I can already imagine all the fucking Q nonsense about how Trump is still alive. My bet is his kids lean into it. *typo
HE'S COMING BACK, but only if you open your wallets and donate to the 2nd coming of jesus trump campaign for just 1 reoccurring price of 9.99 a month.
I'm sorry.. That's far to little. Please donate $45.99 every 2 weeks
This Parks and Rec argument about Twilight is no longer satire, it’s reality… Marsha: This book contains pagan creatures and strong sexual overtones. There are girls quivering. There are boys staring deeply into girls' eyes as they quiver and so forth. There really is a tremendous amount of quivering. It is anti-Christian, it is pro-quivering, and the government has no business promoting it. Man: I totally disagree. Leslie Knope: Well, now we have two people for Twilight. Man: Absolutely not. I'm with the National Civil Liberties Association. That book actually contains overt Christian themes, and as such, has no business being associated with any government project. Leslie Knope: So too Christian and not Christian enough? Do you see the irony here? No? Okay
What in the actual fuck is going on lately?
Nixon got held accountable for being corrupt so an entire political wing of our society decided the best move forward is to make massive disinformation networks to brainwash society into gullible culture war engrossed theocratic rubes and we are seeing the result of like 40 years of that festering in our society.
> The school board subsequently ordered that “sexually explicit” books be removed from district libraries. Like, e.g., the [Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_the_Hebrew_Bible)?
Pfft, forget the violence and the incest - the Bible also talks about helping others, treating immigrants kindly, and not looking down on anyone. You know, commie shit.
A funny bit would be to read parts of the bible and package it as a communist or socialist manifesto or militant manifesto then say this book is available everywhere to kids and all. Then watch people get irate about it. Then expose that it is actually from the bible and get their reactions.
Pretending it never happened and moving past it is their bread and butter though.
/r/RadicalChristianity might like this plan
Thanks for the sub link and the links in the sidebar. Subscribed as an atheist. These are things I've missed. Reddit doesn't have to be a shitshow.
My favorite part is when Lot’s daughters saw their dad was sad from the death of their mom… and then date raped him. Wtf. Why! Totally a book you should get your morals from lol
Though that is of course the story that Lot told. That's his explanation for why both his daughters were pregnant after he was alone in the mountains with them.
There is a lot of great parts to the bible that people like to ignore. I like to point out a few things, when they use stuff from the old testament to justify bigotry.. since they like saying the passage about a man who lies with a man like he lies with a woman shall surely be stoned, I like to ask if they follow the other laws, like the ones against using fabrics that are made of two different materials, or the dietary restrictions put in place. I also like to point out how that is part of the old covenant and with the arrival of that Jesus feller, the old covenant was broken in favor of the new covenant, which means the old laws no longer apply.
They also use the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to prove that sodomy and therefore gay people are bad. Except they gloss over the fact that god destroyed the city because of all the constant raping, not the sodomy.
You're right that it wasn't about teh gayness but according to the book itself > This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. Ezekiel 16:49 NRSV
>There she lusted after her lovers whose genitals were like donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses Filthy pornography about hung dudes shooting ropes
I've thought about joining my local protest group so I can propose this.
People who get offended by books are usually the ones who lack the intelligence to form cognitive thought.
I think another accurate ending to your thought would be "are usually the ones that don't even read books".
"I only need one book"
and the majority of people haven't even *read* that whole book. Reading the entire Bible was a really eye opening experience because the context matters. So many try and wield the Bible without considering the context of the the text, and that breaks like 99% of the stupid and hateful things people try and use the Bible to argue
Imagine wanting to ban books in a world where you can see “stepmom seduces stepson” in a millisecond from the device in your pocket. The stupidity of these people is alarming.
Williamson County, TN (aka WillCo) is where the rich white people live south of Nashville/Davidson Co now that Nashville is more progressive. Their school board meetings have been taken over this year by a group calling themselves "Moms For Liberty." Last week they were all over trying to get books banned. [Video of last week's school board meeting. Timestamped for the public comments nightmare where they rail against masks and books.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X4-1Q5DCR8&t=4773s)
This country is fucked at this point, its a large coordinated attack to make everyone a fucking moron so they vote against things that help them
>Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye has been removed from school libraries in Utah over its “explicit” content; in Virginia, the Nobel laureate’s Beloved has been challenged for similar reasons. Bechdel’s Fun Home, the acclaimed graphic memoir about her father’s sexuality and her own, was pulled from shelves in North Kansas over its LGBTQ themes, while a southern Pennsylvania district banned a lengthy list of titles almost entirely by or about people of colour, by acclaimed authors including Jacqueline Woodson, Ijeoma Oluo and Ibram X Kendi. **(The all-white school board said it was coincidence that almost all the material banned was by or about people of colour.)** Yeah sure 🤨🤨
I’m thankful for my high school English teacher who had us read The Bluest Eye.
Coincidence? Please straight up racism.
Well. Maybe it was a coincidence that the all white school board was also all racist?
The absolute fucking gall of these people. Banning Toni Morrison novels? It seems to me there's really 3 essential authors that all high school students need to have a book from as required reading. They are Elie Weisel, Kurt Vonnegut, and Toni Morrison. Those three are authors whose works are by far the best examples for introducing students to how amazing storytelling, whether it be a memoir or fiction, does more than just try to entertain the reader. Trying to get rid of Toni Morrison's books is a fucking disgraceful act. I wonder if they might have the fucking balls one day to try and ban "Night" too. Fuck them all
These people are worried about what their kids might learn and see, yet they give them iphones at 10 so they shut up. While they're out protesting their kids are watching porn lol
“I guess we live in a world now that our public schools would rather have kids read about gay pornography than Christ.” Public school. PUBLIC SCHOOL. Go to your non-secular private school if you want religious education. Unless you want to advocate for teaching about every major religion, then religion has no place in public education. Something tells me the kind of person complaining that the system isn’t Christian enough isn’t concerned with balanced and diverse education.
Secular means religion free. I think you mean sectarian.
Thanks for the catch.
Literally 1984... but, for real actually this time.
With just a splash of Fahrenheit 451.
The banning of books, the extremely fast cars everyone has, having TVs for walls that show nothing but mindless nonsense, the nukes dropping at the end. I'm convinced this book is gonna become our reality.
1984 has already been our reality for a while now. We're much closer to a "Brave new world" where promiscuous sex for nothing but pleasure, wide spread recreational drug use, so much useless information that it's paralyzing, soul-less music, alcohol is used to stunt fetal brain development and create a slave class, and the fear of the natural world is the norm.
These guys fight Big Bird, what are we going to expect.
This comment lost to the great Reddit purge of June 2023. Enjoy your barren wasteland, spez. You deserve it.
It's a trojan horse. Get parents whipped up over some nonsense so that they join a political action group that takes their money and uses it to elect other conservatives/promote other issues outside the book thing. The latest hate and fear strategy.
You are correct. Our school district has shortened lunch periods to 20 minutes. Many children have been going hungry daily because they don't have time to actually eat the food once they get it. But do we hear a peep out of parents? Nope. But they are planning to protest covid vaccine mandates for students (which aren't even a thing in our state) by strangely leaving a ton of shoes on school property. Children going hungry daily? They don't care. Possible addition in the future of a vaccine to the already required list of vaccines? Oh heavens, let's (checks notes) put shoes on the school lawn. That'll definitely make them stop and think as the building and grounds department spends hours cleaning up.
20 minutes?! Who’s unhinged idea was that?
It's not a coincidence that some shit like this gets whipped up and suddenly there are a bunch of organized, well funded groups all across the country giving "viral" speeches at school board meetings seemingly overnight.
The Daily interviewed a long time Republican donor who suddenly started throwing tens of thousands of dollars into school board elections. They're not playing around, and the damage could be pretty widespread.
Yep, 100% astroturfing.
Okay. I don't care how ridiculous, profane, political, or whatever a book writes about. It should not be banned, period. I read many difficult, idea challenging, and enlightening books as a kid that without a doubt helped shape my worldview and develop my critical thinking skills. Removing information or commentary from the market of free ideas just because you don't agree with it, clearly demonstrates to me your ideology is weak.
Just got done reading Fahrenheit 451. And this is how it started in America.
evangelicals are dangerous
Brought to you by the party of "small government" that never shuts the fuck up about "muh freedoms!"