Comment by ryandrake
2 days ago
I honestly cannot understand how having LGBTQ books in a library even affects people who don't like them. Just don't read the books. It's not like their eyeballs are being glued open and they're being forced to read them. Book banners are such weirdos.
It's obvious. They probably don't even go to the library, they just want control over other people. They don't want other people reading books which could help them out, they want those people to go to church where they can be told they will burn in hell instead.
Evangelicals presumably don’t want their children to be influenced by the environment that having those materials present would foster. They’d much rather have their children influenced by real-life sexual predators present within their church, who upon being discovered (multiple times) choose to address the situation with prayer and allow the predator to remain within the church and around children without ever reporting them to law enforcement. But that’s just my experience.
You've met evangelicals who would much rather have their children influenced by sexual predators than books? Or you're trying to make a snarky comment, so you're tying together two unrelated things, both of which evangelicals would like to avoid?
In fact I have. I grew up in the 1990s evangelical movement, deeply within the culture, home schooled, pro-life rallies, had 10+ kids, women wore denim dresses, etc. Those people. They were hot and ready to ban anything they could get their hands on. Cabbage Patch dolls were demonic, Pokemon were demonic. Gay-anything, it goes without saying, were forces of demons. They were exactly the people who would praise book banning or book burnings.
Meanwhile within their church, on several occasions it was discovered that a man had sexually assaulted little boys. Did they kick him out of the church and go to the police? No, he was a sinner who could be saved by prayer. Until he did it again, and again. Some stupid parents even let him take their boy on a weekend trip years after the situation first came to light. You don't need me to tell you what happened on that trip. I think they finally did get the police involved, but that's after my family finally wised up and left the church.
Unfortunately this wasn't the only incident. There was another family that had two teenage boys. Their teenage boys? Molesting little girls on multiple occasions. Call the police? No, instead have the boys admit their guilt in front of the entire congregation, laying-on hands, prayer, etc. Until they did it again. That family finally high-taled it out of the state.
To this day I wonder why I got out unscathed, except second-hand knowing what was going on. So, yes I have met these evangelicals. Yes, I know their priorities and how they would rather turn a blind eye to sexual assault going on within their own church all the while trying to have Pride parades or whatever banned. Sure, they don't _want_ sexual assault happening, but did they do the slightest to prevent it? No. They tried to pray it away, but meanwhile were happy to expend countless man-hours protesting about obscene books to protect their children. No, I'm not making a purely-snarky comment.
If you're moved by this more in-depth explanation, I'd appreciate if you unflagged my comment.
Were any of these books in the kids' section? That could be one reason.
Also, we shouldn't dilute the meaning of the term "book banners" to refer to anyone who doesn't want a particular book in a particular place (even if that place is a public library). In the US, we are spoiled to have zero actually banned books. Anyone who wants to is free to purchase any book they want, as long as it's for sale somewhere. People who don't want books that have sexual content (which a disproportionate number of sexuality-focused books do) in the kids' section might be fine with those books existing in a different section, or in a private bookstore. True "book banners" would want to enforce a ban on them existing anywhere. This is a subset — and quite possibly a small one — of the former group.
It's not just "sexual content". Take a look at any of the ban lists, like the one provided by the ACLU (https://www.aclu.org/cases/e-k-v-department-of-defense-educa...) from earlier this year. Many of the books are related to slavery, civil rights, climate change, and media literacy, and the orders banning them apply to schools on every military base around the world.
I dug up the list https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44517341
What counts as sexual content? Does any book with gay or trans characters count because that's what people are trying to ban. Maybe we should ban the Bible from libraries because it has plenty of sexual content as well.
I think part of the issue is that books about sexuality are much more likely than regular kid books to have sexually explicit illustrations. Some depict fellatio or other sex acts. Most people don't want their kids to have access to such content, regardless of the type of sexual act shown. I certainly fall into that camp.
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No. It seems like there was an age appropriate sexual health book for 9-12 year olds
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Perfectly_Normal
I have another comment on this thread where I linked a lot of related information about this.
That was the only book that patrons sought to have removed from the kids' section?
Thanks for the wikipedia link. The criticism section is particularly enlightening:
> In a 2023 Slate article, Aymann Ismail, who until then had considered most attempts to ban books hysterical, was taken aback by the book's explicitness.
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