[vlovich123]

So totally cool if an atheist government came to power and started banning the Bible because of all the violence and rape depicted that’s in there (hey - it’s only if you take federal funding)? Or you’ll say it’s totally different because the stories about the Bible are how to be morale thus providing context? Context you conveniently omit from your example which covers all kinds of sexuality and how to navigate that with all the other romantic feelings. Children in my class btw regularly drew and wrote more obscene things.

Why do I feel like the people doing this for gay and trans materials would be the first to object people trying to apply it to religious texts?

Look, I asked when I was like 10 for a book and the library warned my dad it was intended for adults. I think the most he asked me was if I was sure / why I wanted to read the book but ultimately left it to me. Children picking their reading materials is critically important both as a skill of learning how to pick and how to deal and digest the content you encounter.

And here’s something uncomfortable. Unlike religious texts, which are forced onto children, no one was forcing kids to read this book. Kids were searching it out because they were curious about sexuality and trying to understand their feelings which means the age of those “kids” was probably 10+ when they were probably perfectly capable of processing these issues with the support of mature and rational adults. The problem as always are the adults in this situation who demand the rest of society “protect” their children from the ideas out there in world instead of raising resilient kids, which is an insane position honestly.

Finally, what about all the other books that aren’t like the one you pointed out? I feel like among the books gender queer is an exception in terms of explicitness and the real thread that connects the banned books is what they talk about, not how.

[alex43578]

Easy: federal tax dollars should not be buying the bible, whatever book is on this ban list, or anything of the sort.

There’s no need to be reading the bible, a comic book, a book about being gender queer, etc; when students can barely read to begin with.

[vlovich123]

Even though you’ve widely missed the point, ironically complaining that others can barely read, let’s engage with your argument to show how it’s not so easy.

Libraries today carry the Bible. Libraries, as non profits, also get grants from various entities including local, state, and federal governments. So then is the argument we should we then ban all government funding for libraries? I’m going to assume your response is to say “no, just don’t use federal dollars for this stuff” although it’s not wild of someone of your presumed political persuasion to also be in favor of this option. Is that easy though? It’s not like there’s a magical fairy that attributes “book A was purchased from this funding stream and book B from this other”. “No no” I can hear you saying. You do this with block grants - that solves the mixing problem. Except it doesn’t - I have pool A of money from the federal government and pool B from some other source. I normally might use A and B equally to buy some books but now I just buy the banned books from B and A to by the rest. So now I’m not using federal dollars but I’m still buying all the same books with the same input stream of money. If you’re literate you understand this is the exact same problem we have with “this tax or penalty or whatever will be used to fund schools” which is meaningless because they just then decrease the school funding by that new revenue amount, thus effectively funneling it into the general fund.

> There’s no need to be reading the bible, a comic book, a book about being gender queer, etc; when students can barely read to begin with.

If you're talking about “can barely” read it’s important to be precise about what you mean because excluding the pandemic, scores have been pretty constant over the past 20 years. And by the way, reading different texts with different subject matters with different ways of understanding and interpreting the subject matter is precisely important for developing reading skills.

But you’re right - for those in this thread who are struggling with basic reading and critical thinking skills to understand the points people make in the comments, maybe we should recommend them some starting materials.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> So totally cool if an atheist government came to power and

From public libraries? Not many christians are borrowing the bible from the public library, I don't think they'd care. It's also telling that you assume I'm christian myself. This is why the Democrats lose elections, you know. You think that the only ones voting against you are biblethumpers. You count those up, and there's no way team red can win.

>Why do I feel like the people doing this for gay and trans materials would

You mean the people who don't want pornography being distributed to their children in the public schools that they are forced to fund? Those people?

>And here’s something uncomfortable. Unlike religious texts, which are forced onto children, no one was forcing kids to read this book.

The drug dealer defense? "I didn't put a gun to his head and force him to inject fentanyl-laced street heroin!"

>I feel like among the books gender queer is an exception in terms of explicitness

But I didn't complain about those other books, did I? When you look up the lists of "top banned books", do those other books show up at the top of the list? Are they on the list at all? You failed to police your own, and now the rest of us are being forced to police them. That book wasn't banned though never being purchased by school libraries. It had to first show up on the shelf. And you didn't do anything to stop it. Now responsible people have to step in and do it for you.