Missouri Reps Vote To Completely Defund State's Public Libraries (vice.com) 337
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor's office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri. This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries' state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.
ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined (PDF) explicit sexual material as images "showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse," "sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse," or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.
"The house budget committee's choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri's public libraries is abhorrent," Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard. Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers -- every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn't have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June. "State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities," Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. "Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut."
ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined (PDF) explicit sexual material as images "showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse," "sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse," or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.
"The house budget committee's choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri's public libraries is abhorrent," Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard. Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers -- every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn't have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June. "State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities," Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. "Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut."
It's a red state. (Score:3, Insightful)
Punk ass conservative cock suckers don't read anyway.
Re:It's a red state. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can's have educated voters now, that would ruin the party.
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Delicious irony here.
(yes anyone posting on a cell phone will inevitably get some errors to spelling/grammar from unwanted autocorrect behavior, but it's not clear how you wound up with "Can's" in this particular case).
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I can think of a few perfectly reasonable things that might have lead to that specific mistake. Think about this from the perspective of a poorly thought-out predictive text feature:
The 's' character is the most likely to follow an apostrophe. That "Can's" would be a suggestion isn't too surprising.
The fact that the word was capitalized might have also had an impact. The possessive form of 'can' (the object) is pretty damn unusual, but if the software thought it was someone's name, it would make sense to
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Re: It's a red state. (Score:2)
Uh everyone?
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Iphone typing is nuts. Half the time it has me sounding like a complete mentalist because the 'buttons' are too small and non tactile and my utterly garbage eyesight isnt always catching the errors. Couple that with the lack of edit on this arcane website, and yeah, I've got more than a few posts where I've read back what I've written and it reads like I've just had a stroke, alas.
Re:It's a red state. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh they love college in Missouri though. For the football!
Re:It's a red state. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's my personal observation that people who do read (at least enough, with at least a mix of non-fiction, with a modicum of comprehension and critical thought) are less likely to be conservative or liberal. Rather, they would be educated.
Here is the root of the problem.
Educated people are generally independent thinkers and as such tend to have differing opinions which makes it nearly impossible to establish a part of such people.
Two party politics are for people of generally low intelligence and the inability to rationally consider consequences of actions. Basically, it's populist herd mentality.
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It's my personal observation that people who do read (at least enough, with at least a mix of non-fiction, with a modicum of comprehension and critical thought) are less likely to be conservative or liberal. Rather, they would be educated.
So, liberal.
Clearly, you don't read enough. (Score:3)
It's my personal observation that people who do read (at least enough, with at least a mix of non-fiction, with a modicum of comprehension and critical thought) are less likely to be conservative or liberal. Rather, they would be educated.
That's nonsense.
First of all, might wanna try a synonym there to grasp what being "educated" means - like saying "instructed" instead.
Cause that's what education IS - "the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university".
Now... that INSTRUCTION is highly dependent on the source material, direction and the director of said instruction.
I.e. Inherent ideology. Inherent to the material, to instruction methods, to the instructor, to the instructed, to the entire societ
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Try again. Your statements could only apply to some silly definition of "liberal".
Re:It's a red state. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seneca said that religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
It's kinda weird that the same applies to politics.
Re: It's a red state. (Score:3)
Re: It's a red state. (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. Personally I call these "quasi-religion". I had a guest student from former Yugoslavia a few decades back (heavily "communist" influenced when she grew up, but already over when she visited) and the rituals she described and stories she told were pretty much in the "religion" camp, with "God" replaced by the great "leader". Same happened in Germany almost a century back. Same happens currently in, for example, North Korea. And yes, there are worryingly strong tendencies in that direction in the US as well. It is never a good thing for anybody except maybe for the ruling elite.
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Interesting claim. Looks pretty much like an outright anti-agnostic lie to me. If you look at people that mistake politics for religion, you often find they are also strongly religious. Have, for example, a look at who stormed the capitol.
Actual agnostics (not the "organized" kind that is into some organized quasi-religion) are pretty laid back. Some real atheists are a bit more aggressive, but that is rare.
Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck is up with Republicans? They refuse to accept a democratic election. They want to ban books. They want to ban web sites. They want to stomp anyone that does not agree with them. All so very un-American.
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Like 20-30% of them are completely nuts and the rest are ghouls that will exploit it but never stand up to the insanity. Enjoy.
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Nuts are now banned in many states. Unless there's a fig leaf.
Re:Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
It's retaliation for an ACLU lawsuit. The lawsuit is costing the state money, so they're taking it out of the hides of people affiliated with those filing suit. Dirty pool, but also very effective.
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What the fuck is up with Republicans?
They are frighted by a world they can no longer even pretend to themselves to understand, therefore, as any savage group, will break it in an effort to restore what they think they understood. They have a lot in common with the Guals, "know nothings" and the luddites.
All so very un-American.
I'm sorry to disabuse you of the idea, but ever since the Party Flip (When democrats became republicans and republicans became democrats) they are not Pro America nor are they pro fre
Confederates (Score:5, Insightful)
Frederick Douglass lamented the Confederates coming into the Republican party and hoped they'd go away.
There are no more Republicans in the Republican party. It's the party of the Klan now.
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The current Reps would probably kick Eisenhower out for being a friggin' liberal.
Re:Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, a republican might say similar things of a democrat.
They would. They just wouldn't have many actual, non-made-up, examples to point to.
Re: Republicans (Score:4, Informative)
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The bill to ban TikTok has lots of support from both sides of the aisle, it's the one thing they sort of agree upon.
Re: Republicans (Score:4, Interesting)
The bill to ban TikTok has lots of support from both sides of the aisle, it's the one thing they sort of agree upon.
Both sides believe they have something to gain with one less social media company as a wildcard in their efforts to control the narrative.
Re: Republicans (Score:3)
Democrats... (Score:3, Informative)
> They would. They just wouldn't have many actual, non-made-up, examples to point to.
That's an empirical question, why don't we test that? This is what I could come up with in a few minutes, so it's by no means comprehensive.
> They refuse to accept a democratic election.
I'd be remiss if we didn't start with the obvious, that is: Hillary Clinton Maintains 2016 Election ‘Was Not On the Level’: ‘We Still Don’t Know What Really Happened’ [slashdot.org]
Let's see how many of you reply with
Re:Democrats... (Score:5, Informative)
>> I'd be remiss if we didn't start with the obvious, that is: Hillary Clinton Maintains 2016 Election ‘Was Not On the Level’: ‘We Still Don’t Know What Really Happened’ [slashdot.org]
I love the example of, Hillary Clinton conceded the day after the election, was upset about Russian disinformation in the election as confirmed by FBI. No call to dispute the outcome, no attempt to get in false electors, no calls to governers to "find" votes.
versus
My pillow guy and a woman claiming to get visions from time travelling spirit heading up the legal bombshells about how the 2020 election was rigged and the loser telling his followers to march on the capital.
>> Meanwhile you guys either stop anyone from getting new copies of books, or censor the new editions for everyone
All the examples you listed were the owner/publisher deciding to do this themselves. Not a bunch of Democrat leglistlators demanding it.
>> And c'mon, one of you guys literally murdered three little kids the other day because you disagreed with a democratically approved law
A tragedy indeed, and if we start looking up the number of mass shootings and their motivations, it's going to get dark and speculative - on the 300 to 700 mass shootings a year in the USA it's pretty freaking dark.
>> Wanna do the "science denial" bonus round after this? That's your strongest suit, right? Well, it's going to be a little bit harder on you when I point out that I believe AGW is real and the Covid vaccine saved lives, though.
Congratulations on you personally going against the narratives of the party that we're complaining about.
Re:Democrats... (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile you guys either stop anyone from getting new copies of books,
If you have to lie to support your point, then a small part of your brain must know your point is unsupportable.
Re:Democrats... (Score:5, Informative)
The GP said "non-made-up". The Mueller Report says, right on the very first page, first paragraph, that there was extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election. By any reasonable standard, Clinton's claim is not made up.
In comparison, there were extensive investigations into the 2020 election, and they found no evidence of widespread fraud, no evidence of systematic tampering, no evidence that Trump really won. By any reasonable standard, claims that Trump did win are made up.
Re:Democrats... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't just about small children. It bans, for example, sex education books and biology books from libraries for high school students.
As for Roald Dhal and the others, this is not new at all. Dhal originally had the Umpa-Lumpas be an African tribe, with all the obvious parallels to slavery and the whitewashing of it. Back when the book was originally published in the 1960s, his publishers insisted he change the description to be less racist. What most people consider to be the original actually never was.
There is no such thing as "trans ideology", only trans people who simply exist. Like gay people, their only "ideology" is that they should be treated with basic respect and dignity.
Re: Democrats... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democrats... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like gay people, their only "ideology" is that they should be treated with basic respect and dignity.
To the kind of bigots who would see people not like them dead, wanting to not be murdered by the state is a political ideology.
Re:Democrats... (Score:4, Informative)
And c'mon, one of you guys literally murdered three little kids the other day because you disagreed with a democratically approved law.
Interesting. Why do you assume that they were a Democrat or that this had anything to do with some particular law? Which law?. They were, after all, educated in a religious school. No one has actually released any details about why she did this. It is clear though, that in the overwhelming number of these attacks, where politics actually play a role, the perpetrator is right-wing, so I am not sure why, even if this was an exception, you would want to draw attention to such an exception since the rarity of that exception kind of proves the rule (that rule being that psycho shooters tend to be right-wingers murdering for right-wing causes).
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It used to be sex, not gender. Gender was a grammatical term used for languages that have genders. Thus a female dog in France still has masculine gender. Says nothing about their proclivities or self identity. However, oddly enough, their preferred pronouns do intersect nicely with grammatical gender!
Re: Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you do if you meet someone with a name badge that you can't pronounce? You can either try to awkwardly avoid saying their name, or you can simply ask them how to properly pronounce it. Same with pronouns. It's not hard at all. You can even prompt them to give you theirs by simply giving your own when you introduce yourself. To make your life even easier, a lot of people are putting their pronouns in their email signatures and social media profiles.
It's just so incredibly easy not to be a twat, it's really hard justifying not making the effort. And by the way, your ideas are very old. We had all this with gay people. They aren't "really" in love, their marriage isn't a "real" marriage. You just have to go along with their delusion, bend over backwards not to be a complete asshat towards them, or people might think you are a complete asshat... You aren't going to convince many people with that recycled crap.
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Politics has always been about showboating. However the trend to use politics or bills as forms of revenge or to get even is nuts.
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Nobody on the Left wants to show children sexually explicit materials while in fact politicians on the Right are having sex with children.
Re:Republicans (Score:5, Informative)
These same people don’t have any problems with the bible. No shortage of filth in that book. Daughters getting their father drunk to have sex. Women describing genitals like those of a donkey with emissions to match.
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What do you think he is? A Republican?
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And? I don't get it. You really can't tell the difference between literature and explicit sexual pictures?
Like Michelangelo's David, you mean?
Your day sucks because YOU chose poorly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Both sides have become polarized to hell. When things go to the extremes you get things like fascism or communism.
Oh do fuck off. You lot didn't stand up to the bullshit from your party so now you're stuck trying to equate an attempted insurrection to wanting to fix health care in this country.
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The Democrats have moved so far to the right they are essentially Republicans.
Most of the movement has been from the right. Don't forget we're discussing this well after January 6th.
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It's not really the "right". It's populism. Trump didn't really do much things that were conservative or right wing. He appointed judges that appealed to social conservatives but he completely threw away social economic ideas. Populism is about saying what makes the crowd cheer the most, which means what the speaker stands for can change daily.
Re: Your day sucks because YOU chose poorly. (Score:2)
I accept the correction. Thank you.
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Politics is like sports. Paint your face in team colors, rip your shirt off, and drink too much while cheering for your team and demanding that the other team be kicked off the field.
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> Once >50% of the country vote for something it's not un-American any more
I have to disagree here. Anytime you have >50% of the *country* voting for something there are voters in there voting *against* something else more than *for* anything. Most people are holding their noses in National elections and voting for whatever they think is the least shitty option, and all of the options are shitty and no one is happy with every outcome/consequence of voting for someone.
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Can you point to a Republican president that was actually elected with more than 50% of the popular vote recently?
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Let's own it. Once >50% of the country vote for something it's not un-American any more
The Right is also very good at gerrymandering so they never seem to need 50% of the votes.
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However the powers on the right define "sexually explicit" extremely broadly, and think many classics are inappropriate. Few on the left in power want to ban free speech, ignore the few college kids demanding it because being stupid in college is a right of passage.
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Take a minute to refresh yourself on the First Amendment and tell me if you still think both sides are the same:
Yes, both sides are the same. Neither of them can actually pass laws to ban books or restrict speech so each is using a workaround. The right shuts down libraries or bans books for kids which is legal. The left can't get the government to restrict speech it does not like so instead it enlists the power of corporations who, in today's world have powers rivalling government.
In both cases, they are trying to ban the expression of ideas that they do not like instead of trying to intellectually engage and de
Re:Left and Right (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, you're not going to read a single link here and reply with "LOL! No" followed by accusations of lying
LOL! No. You're lying. Fun fact: I don't need to read those links because they're the same links you right-wing zombies copy/paste every time you get called out on your anti-American bullshit.
To the surprise of no one, your silly links don't actually support your bullshit claims. You would know this if you had read them for yourself, instead of blindly copying them from your propaganda master. For example:
Who do you think banned To Kill a Mockingbird in California?
No one did, you lying piece of shit. One district changing which books will be required reading is NOT a book ban. The books you're lying about being banned are still available in the school library and some classrooms!
That's more effort than your bullshit post deserved. Fuck off.
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Is anyone surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
At this point Republicans are doing everything they can to penalize people. They are taking their cues from the their dear indicted leader and of course, Russia.
Look at everything they do. From DeSantis trying (and miserably failing) to take over Disney, cancel culture against any company which doesn't toe their fascist line, to openly admitting they'll do nothing to stop kids from being slaughtered. One of them just said the U.S. isn't a democracy [lgbtqnation.com] (others have said the same thing, but this is the most re
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Re:Is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
how many times have you visited a public library in say the last 20 years,
Hundreds of times! Which is one of the reasons that I am not an ignoramus like the Missouri Republicans.
You can check out public library books online. (Score:2)
Also access to paid library resources such as Morningstar financial analysis with your public library card.
Missouri/Misery? I doubt that's coincidence, but I've never been.
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Today. Nothing like using both physical and electronic book subscriptions.
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In Germany going to the library is my way of "demoing" a book, before I spend money on it so I can soothe my conscious when I use the information contained in there commercially. Because while I do not believe copyright infringement to be theft or something equally severe I still mostly respect it (exceptions are stuff that's funded with tax payer money and then still being hidd
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Go visit a public library. There’ll actually be a bunch of people there.
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Where do you think that is happening? Also, have you heard of the internet?
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Here: https://local12.com/news/natio... [local12.com]
Here: https://apnews.com/article/ent... [apnews.com]
Here: https://stroudsburgherald.com/... [stroudsburgherald.com]
Here: https://nbcmontana.com/news/na... [nbcmontana.com]
Here: https://binjonline.com/2022/08... [binjonline.com]
Here: https://www.pikecountycourier.... [pikecountycourier.com]
If you want more those took two minutes to find on the first page of a single Google search. There are a whole lot more.
As to your second question it isn't appropriate to let children loose on the unfiltered internet unsupervised. That's all that's happening in libraries no
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I looked through "Gender Queer" as it is a comic book that can be flipped through and can be found online easily for those who want to take a look themselves.
I can see what people would call that pornographic as it is graphic enough and not just some vague implications in written form. I too think that it's not appropriate material for pre-teens, where it was supposedly available in school libraries to children aged 7 to 12.
Since Lawn Boy
Ignorance is bliss (Score:5, Insightful)
Books (and wikipedia) are the work of the devil.
Trust in the lord and the great state of Missouri.
Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an old joke about two guys being startled by a bear in their camp and one of them bothering to put on his shoes. The punchline is something to the effect of, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."
As a parent of a young child, I salute the lawmakers of Missouri for forcibly taking off the shoes of their native sons and daughters. In several years when it's time to compete for college admissions she'll face less competition from her peers from the Show Me State.
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Ironically, when US citizens hit the job market, the same politicians who hamstrung education say that US workers are lazy as sin and can't compete, using that as an excuse to destroy more social safety nets. Saw it in the 90s with Japan, saw it with India and China.
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Mmmhmm.
There's also a fairly reliable correlation between the dropout rate and the incarceration rate.
Most institutions are already operated with an eye on trying to get the most return for the expenditure as can be reasonably achieved. Cut costs too far (increases in K-12 class-sizes, reduction in curriculum, reduction in standards, elimination of ancillary services like libraries) in order to achieve short-term savings and long-term the return on the remaining money that was spent is far lower than just
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Missouri is already number 30 in education.
Missouri will join Florida (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm of two minds (Score:2, Insightful)
On the one hand, the platonic ideal of state support for a library is content neutral. And while zeroing out the budget is content neutral, it seems to violate the spirit when taken in context.
On the other hand, throwing pr0n at small children is not something I can get behind. Even if the libertarian in me (and the former teenage boy in me) can't really find a reason to be particularly enthused about any moral panics on the matter.
On the third hand, there's very much a project out there to push lgbt stuff
Re:I'm of two minds (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been reading this accusation over and over, and the most "pr0n" imagery I've seen cited as evidence is from the comic Maus, which tells about the horrors of the Holocaust.
For reference: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FK... [twimg.com] (beware of crudely drawn mouse penises while the mouses are in the shower) that's supposedly what got this book removed.
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But those are pretty strictly partisan takes on the issue, which if I want to be fair again, might as well be just strawmen that misrepresent the intentions of those that would see such (mental) imagery removed for the benefit of young children.
So I do wonder where the lines for pornography are drawn there by those who support these things. And what from th
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It's not porn. It's anything to do with LGBTQ themes or anything else they THINK their invisible man in the sky wouldn't approve. Don't believe the hype. GOP are fast becoming the Nazis of 1939. They DON'T and never have had porn in public libraries.
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I also don't approve of teaching kids that men can get pregnant and women an father children
What exactly is it you don't approve of? Teaching kids that some people identify with a gender (a social construct) that doesn't match their sex (a biological property)? Even though that's an objectively true fact? Or teaching them that sexual development is complicated, and some people end up with physical features of both sexes? Often involving having the genitals for one sex but the brain structures for the other sex?
All these things are objective facts. Why don't you approve of teaching them?
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Yep, if kids don't know anything about sex, the preacher can fuck them up the ass while telling them it is normal and Gods will. Child molesters want ignorant kids to molest.
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" I also don't approve of teaching kids that men can get pregnant and women an father children with their biologically female penises."
You need to show some real life examples of this, I'm not seeing it in real reality.
Re: I'm of two minds (Score:2)
I'm not seeing it in reality either. But reality turns over slowly. Where I do see and hear it starting to show up is the occasional story on NPR that insists not all women have vaginas (according to Science, dontchaknow), articles in the New York Times or Boston Globe that tie themselves in knots describing House Minority Whip Katherine Clark's anarchist rioter son as an anarchist rioter daughter, and in seemingly normal people in my workplace now feeling the need to put their pronouns in their email sigs
The state of Misery (Score:4, Funny)
Dont need no Readin here. No Ritin, nor Rithmatic neither!
Who reads books if you have TikTok? (Score:2)
Duh! All these dinosaurus with their tree killing ideas.
Bad headline (Score:2)
I don't support these fools, but "completely defund" is overstating the case.
Public libraries have multiple funding sources.
In my state most of the money comes from counties.
$4.5 million isn't nothing, but my guess is that's being divided among well over 100 libraries.
Re:Bad headline (Score:5, Informative)
I don't support these fools, but "completely defund" is overstating the case. Public libraries have multiple funding sources. In my state most of the money comes from counties. $4.5 million isn't nothing, but my guess is that's being divided among well over 100 libraries.
399 [librarytechnology.org].
This is about $11,300 per library. Basically, the great State of Missouri never funded their public libraries to begin with. In the short term, this will hurt, and some young people, particularly in rural areas, will probably lose access to libraries. In the long term, however, this will make the libraries that still exist more resilient to interference by state bureaucrats throwing their weight around.
Further evidence, if any was needed, (Score:3)
that Republican politicians are evil.
No biggie (Score:2)
And all the Muslim fundamentalists laughed (Score:4, Informative)
The politicians who were so gung-ho for the US to go into the Middle East to straighten out those nasty Muslim extremists, are now using the playbook of those same extremists. Not that there's any hypocrisy in evidence here...
I guess it's a hierarchical thing. Maybe some politicians get resentful when they've spent their lives fearing Magic Sky Daddy and accepting a shabby fairy tale as literal truth. Maybe they then feel the need to have others subjugated to their will so they won't be at the bottom of the hierarchy because they've created a still-lower place for the misery to settle.
Then again, maybe they're all just shit-stains on the fabric of society.
It's cheaper and easier then burning the books (Score:2)
And the Democrats regularly lose to these people (Score:3)
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No one is changing their vote because of guns or abortion ...
That's why political campaigns talk about 'tough on crime', 'small government', 'fiscal responsibility', national security and jobs: Mostly meaningless buzzwords that tell the voter which party is better. "Meaningless" because it can refer to anything, or because there is no plan instructing voters what a party will change. Sometimes the voters don't believe them (eg. 2022), most times, the voters do.
When every social issue is political, the SJW and megalomaniacs join the party in power: That makes th
Let's burn books that mention sex! (Score:3)
I have a Bible for kindling. Git'er done!
Religious freedom (Score:2)
"Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. "
So they banned the Bible, which if you ever read it you'll know has many pornographic verses. I am talking about passages like Ezekiel 23:18-21 and plenty of other lewd and sexually explicit/deviant stuff.
Things have changed (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was a teen (before the internet) I hunted in every local bookstore (and the library) for anything remotely akin to porn and rarely found any. Now it seems it's in every library, so much so that they all must be closed.
Defund the police or libraries? (Score:3)
Which is sillier or more objectionable, defunding the police or defunding libraries? Both ideas attempt to use government appropriations to destroy an organization that is viewed as immoral. The irony lies in the same scorched-earth initiative being seized upon by polar opposites on the political ideological scale.
Re: As always, Republicans are garbage people (Score:2)
Our libraries always have patrons. If not I'm the research and reading sections, then I'm the 3D printing section, or the audio or video sections.
A library that doesn't evolve is a dinosaur. They need to provide what the community needs, and learning opportunities the less-wealthy can't buy for themselves.
Sometimes this takes budget (can't do diddly with $0), but sometimes vision and volunteers.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree, libraries have for too long been carrying pornographic texts such as the Bible which has verses such as Ezekiel 23:18-21. And that one's not the only explicit set of verses there are plenty of other highly deviant stuff in the Bible. Most Christians are only aware of the few verses their pastor spews out to make them dish out cash.