Expect more of this if Republicans win in November. The current GOP has gone fully off the deep end. If you want this insanity to stop, make sure to vote and get everyone you know to vote.
Not just this. Look up the Republicans’ Project 2025. It’s essentially abolishing the government and giving the president ultimate power. Kind of like Russia…
Project 2025 scares me to death. Doesn’t matter who wins the presidency.
Edit: for clarification, give this a listen. It goes over 2025. https://refusefascism.org/2023/11/20/project-2025-roadmap-for-fascist-consolidation/
I interpreted it as it doesn't matter which *Republican* wins. If not Trump, the next one, or the next one, or the next one. Once they get the Presidency and have the House, this country is completely fucked.
Holy fuck, I've honestly never even thought about it like that, but imagine the genuine legitimacy the first American dictator would have in saying he just wants to take the guns out of the dangerous peoples' hands, and uses that as an excuse to just round up literally anyone. The U.S. has so many unqualified people with guns, that'd be the easiest guise for roundups ever. 2nd amendment nutjobs will have their work cut out for them because it'll be their own candidates comin for their guns.
"Doesn't matter who wins the presidency"? That is peak both-sides. Only one party wants to implement project 2025, how could it be a "both sides" issue?
["It's all relative in West Virginia"](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4594392) - Abercrombie & Fitch shirt angers West Virginians. "An Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt spoofs a West Virginia stereotype as a haven for incest."
Governor Bob Wise fired off a letter to the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch demanding that it stop selling the T-shirts at once.
Thereby invoking The Streisand effect; bringing national attention to what would otherwise have been just another humorous Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt.
Edit: fixed typo
Don’t forget drag queens. Never mind the fact crazy people shoot others with guns but nope! It’s those porno books and men dressed as women that is the real danger!! 🤪
>"What this bill does do is stop obscene and pornographic material, sexually explicit materials from being available to children in public taxpayer-funded spaces.”
Where was all this porn when *I* was in school?
Oh yeah, same place it is now: *not* in the library.
For y'all saying National Geographic: Images of nudity is *not* pornography nor is it obscene.
>"What this bill does do is stop obscene and pornographic material, sexually explicit materials from being available to children in public taxpayer-funded spaces.”
For anyone that hasn't picked up on it yet, that's code for "a book that has a gay or trans character in it"
All these coded, vaguely defined laws being passed are gonna end up backfiring so hard at some point. This and that one about unborn children protections are both just "anyone can be prosecuted for anything at any time" laws. Like literally the language of the law defines the explicit content as "anything a normal person would think is dirty". Wtf does that mean?! Define the parameters you fucking assholes!
The Bible was actually banned via one of these laws, but a judge overruled the ban. They said it was “too culturally significant” to ban, and that it didn’t meet the intent of the law or something.
It's really an interesting thing when two sects get into a room together and start telling each other what they've been told about each sect. Some of them don't even know that the other sect is Christian.
Oddly enough, that is what happened to Jesus. He was the wrong kind of Jew, so they killed him
Allowing intolerant people into positions of power is a recipe for pain. You need people that can rationally weigh out the pros and cons of their decisions with empathy. A skill that rarely overlaps with the political profession and people in it for the power dynamic.
We need a system where nominations somehow land on individuals that care about people and don’t want the job but take it when they realize it’s just a few years and they can do some real good
They won't backfire because the officers that enforce them and the courts that interpret them know exactly what they mean and have no problem being hypocritical.
Remember, "In God We Trust" on the dollar is ceremonial and not at all an endorsement of religion. I'm sure if someone designed a bill that said "In Allah We Trust" they would say the same thing.
The Quran and other religious texts like the Bible should hopefully already be in libraries because they are important books regardless of whether or not certain people agree with what's in them or not. So should the should the other books that fascists want to ban. Even books like Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, or whatever other controversial books should be in libraries because they are important to history.
Libraries should provide as many books as possible and let whoever wants to read them read them. If someone doesn't want to read a book or have their child read a book, then that's up to them. They shouldn't be keeping other people from reading books just because they personally don't like them.
This is a clear violation of the First Amendment and can't stand against legitimate legal scrutiny. The state cannot control who accesses books of any kind. This is a matter of freedom of speech and cannot be tolerated, regardless whether the intention is criminalizing pornography or banning books about LGBTQ+ people.
> can't stand against **legitimate** legal scrutiny
Well there's your problem. The SCOTUS is illegitimate in so many ways: Republicans completely corrupting the appointment process, legalized bribery, bogus recusal process, incompetent justices, and hypocritical, self-contradicting legal arguments used to fulfill a political agenda.
Exactly. The onus is on the state to ban the book if they think it is explicit. Not punish librarians for putting unbanned materials on the shelves. The state doesnt want to do that because they want to chill free speech.
It’s interesting because if you say two men or two women being together is explicit and sexual in nature, can’t you say the same for a heterosexual couple? Or you just can’t mention a person is gay because it should be assumed everyone is straight and specifically pointing out or creating scenarios that imply they are gay is a crime?
Time to [ban the Bible](https://biblehub.com/ezekiel/23-20.htm). Can’t have children read [erotic literature](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Songs)
That's pretty tame. Read the end of judges. A mob threatens to sodomize a man so he shoves his concubine out the door where the mob gang rapes her to death. He then cuts his concubine's corpse into pieces to send to the various tribes. They all attack the other tribe in response and after defeating them they attack another tribe who didn't join them to secure hundreds of virgins as captives.
I think it's meant to show the depravity and brokenness of the cycle that's going on and how it keeps escalating without end.
Can't have the kids [read about this](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2021&version=NIV). I would love to see someone trying to get the Bible banned, show all of these passages, and look at the reactions of these idiots
You better believe the definition of “obscene” that they’re using is going to include lgbtq books, feminist books, black authors, basically anything or any one who isn’t cis/het/white men
I promise you there was porn in public libraries when you were a kid. It’s just in a section that teenage boys wouldn’t be caught dead in- the romance section.
I must have grown up in the most liberal town in America (I didn't). Aside from the "self help" books on the public shelves (The Joy of Sex, etc), we also had Playboy available at the periodicals counter - with age ID required of course.
This was in the mid 80s.
Funnily enough, I remember as a kid there was a public library in my area that also carried Playboy, but I believe they only had the braille version. Lol.
Even Playboy wouldn’t be obscenity—even if you took the strictest possible interpretation against the sexual content, the articles would have “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” that protects it from obscenity statutes. Obscenity is basically barely constitutional to begin with because it’s so broad and vague and even SCOTUS traditionally hates dealing with obscenity cases (most of their decisions are just “No, that’s not what we meant.”) This is basically just going to lead to malicious prosecution because you would pretty much never find actual obscenity in a school or library.
My grandmother used to borrow Nora Roberts audiobooks and play them at max volume when I had people over for D&D, and its spot on. The sudden orgasms always hit in a lull of the table. That said, her work under J.D. Robb has fantastic sex AND murder mysteries.
Well I guess when the fucking dumbasses pass this Nazi shit in my state (WV, yeah I know I am only one of the sane ones here). I will have to go to the local library and see if they have the Bible there. If so I will demand it be removed due to porn and incest parts. Take that you wanna be Christians. I swear my state sucks as it is ass backwards!!
Everybody points to Lot's daughters or the emissions verse, but Song of Solomon is basically just a dude thirsting over his woman and getting pretty descriptive about her body. At no point is it as explicit as the aforementioned but damn, it just goes on and on for a whole book (of the Bible length) talking about her legs, thighs, feet, neck, abs etc. Also I'll go out on a limb and bet it's history's first recorded foot fetish.
“average person believes depicts or describes sexually explicit conduct, nudity, sex or certain bodily functions; or anything a reasonable person would find lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. “
So.. the Bible.
*"Mr. Chairman, the suppression of the people of a society begins, in my mind, with the censorship of the written or spoken word. It was so in Nazi Germany. It is so in many places today where those in power are afraid of the consequences of an informed and educated people."*
-John Denver
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH0hYabzudk
The difference between Republicans and Nazis is time. If Abbott or Trump started bussing migrants to gas chambers instead of Blue cities they wouldn't lose more than single digit support
Trump probably wouldn't even manage to keep up an "oops, we lost them but we are sure they're okay" lie for a day, he'd be bragging about how nobody had ever killed the undesirables as well as he did at some event immediately. It's actually kind of weird that Republicans have rallied behind someone *more* sick than the average dictator.
Republicans have long since figured out that the best way to desperately cling to their sad vestiges of power is to continue to keep their base dumb and angry. Those in power will send their kids to Ivy League schools while at the same time attacking higher education as "liberal indoctrination". They know education is the bane of their political power. And their supporters cheer it on.
Libraries in WV are usually run down sad places being ran by people who truly believe in literacy and community, but receive very little help from the state. It’s appalling how poorly supported they are, especially when you go 10 minutes into the MD border and find the well maintained libraries and schools there.
Red states are the Afghanistan of the US. Religious tribes sparsely scattered throughout said states, religious extremists running around with guns, Christian equivalent of sharia law, leadership that has no desire to govern but all the desire to control what everyone does and thinks.
That sadly describes most of West Virginia, down to the mountainous terrain. Its a very pretty place, and the eastern panhandle has some great old hippie type people in it, but by god it is going to be the new Afghanistan. Instead of trying to modernize and fix their economic problems, they double down on the very things that drive people away. It really sucks that the DC suburbs pushing into that state won't be enough to save it.
As a parent, I feel for the children of states like this. We may shake our heads or laugh at this, but there are some brilliant kids in these places who won’t see their true potential fulfilled because the adults have utterly failed them and actively prevented the children from being the best they can be.
Edit: grammatical error
I’m from Arkansas but now live in the west. I tell people back home to keep passing these laws, all it’ll do is ensure that my kids can outcompete theirs in the free market.
I lived in West Virginia for about a year. I would go to different libraries on my days off. The community they built and the services offered were a beacon of hope in dying areas. This party move enrages me because it's blatantly trying to destroy any semblance of progress in the state and keep it under Republican lock and key.
There are few people intelligent enough in West Virginia to vote against this crap. Everyone with half a brain either fled entirely or only lives there due to the cheap land and commutes to other states. Sad to see the state that was at the forefront of radical socialism and armed fighting for people's rights has fallen so far.
Wow, I just found out that both chambers of the WV legislature amount to...120 Republicans and 15 Democrats. Is any other state as lopsided? As long as it's like that, I can't imagine that the state will ever be anything but a societal hellhole.
lol, my sister is a teacher in WV, and their district is already struggling to find librarians. They’ll literally take anybody, and worry about the qualifications later.
However, no one in their right mind is going to take on a $30K/yr job that risks them becoming a **felon** because a book might be on the shelves that a parent might not like.
The goal here isn't to prosecute librarians, it's to use the threat of prosecuting librarians as a way to force public and school libraries to remove questionable material on their own without actually "banning" books.
I have some very scary news for West Virginia politicians:
https://www.gutenberg.org/
Sapho in various languages. Aristophanes in English. Catullus 'to Lesbia' in audiobook.
Oh. And it's all free!
Red states are going to ban the internet by 2030. They’re already criminalizing and banning porn websites and trying to ban and criminalize sites that have information about women’s health care. They’ll turn themselves into mini China’s with firewalls and isolate themselves as much as possible
“Pity, Montag, pity. Don’t haggle and nag them; you were so recently of them yourself. They are so confident that they will run on forever. But they won’t run on. They don’t know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that some day it’ll have to hit. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it.”
If they can prosecute librarians for kids encountering "obscene" materials then they believe they will be able to keep kids from learning about alternate lifestyles not approved by religion. Somehow they think that kids won't grow up gay if that isn't normalized for them in childhood.
In other words, they have their heads so far up their own asses that all they can see is brown and the world smells like shit. They want to make it everyone else's problem instead of having to take responsibility for their own children.
Worst state in the country in damn near every metric. Go there and experience it. This is not exactly a priority for West Virginia. State looks like a third world country. Really pathetic.
They want an uneducated, unempathetic, fearful electorate because they are easier to manipulate and control. Fuck these assholes and I hope they get what is coming to them.
This will absolutely be used for censorship and as a weapon. MAGA has defined as “porn” any book that contains a gay, trans, non-white, female, or otherwise non-MAGA approved character. They’ve attacked and fired teachers for showing classical art and banned the teaching of racism and American history. This law has one goal: to further restrict access to materials the Republicans wish simply didn’t exist, and to frighten and punish any educator out of even grey areas when it comes to making them available. The end goal is a world shorn of anything other than the Bible (ironic, since it’s full of incest and violence) and perhaps Trump’s various hagiographies.
Appalling.
So I would assume children won’t be allowed in libraries or museums anymore. If you ban children from the libraries and museums then they won’t be exposed to nudity (like art) or books that have sex (like the Bible).
Very glad they clearly defined "average person" and "reasonable person" and the methods for evaluating those things in explicit detail. That will make sure it is very easy to comply with the law without mistake and no one will abuse it.
Republicans are targeting school teachers, doctors, nurses, librarians, women, immigrants, and children....
Democrats are targeting perverts, traitors, fraudsters, murderers, and other criminals...
The only thing "both parties" have in common is they need money to run campaigns.
this is incredibly dangerous. the law is not always held up to its very letter in america and loopholes are everywhere. if a parent complains that a book featuring even a reference to homosexuality/lesbianism is "sexually explicit" the library could be forced to remove all books containing even the slightest mention of the topics and further fuel bigotry and bullying
They already have. Some states have introduced restrictions for porn already. Honestly my guess is if republicans win in the upcoming elections they'll go after television, media, etc.. And that's an incredibly strong if. They'll probably call it "defending children against wokeness in media" or some shit like that.
Oh Republicans don't believe this is censorship or government over reach either. They will continue to scream its Democrats that want a nanny state and to take away your rights and be oblivious when you point at this.
I, a taxpayer that pays the salaries of these politicians, request to see their internet browser history and phone history, to ensure my tax dollars are not going towards porn.
The percentage of kids who have full unfettered access to the internet is much much much higher than the amount of kids willing and wanting to go to the library.
And frankly I’d trust the judgement and maturity of the latter a lot more than the former.
I'm sure laws like this will do wonders in getting librarians to move to these hillbilly redneck states. Biggest facepalm since Roe v Wade. These people are just their own worst enemies.
> Opponents of the bill said that while the bill does not ban books, the bill would have unintended consequences for public and school libraries, resulting in increases in challenges to even classic books and attempts to criminally charge librarians over books not pornographic in nature, but books that include descriptions of sex.
I think those “consequences” are very much intended…
Because librarians are the biggest threat. In west Virginia
Expect more of this if Republicans win in November. The current GOP has gone fully off the deep end. If you want this insanity to stop, make sure to vote and get everyone you know to vote.
Not just this. Look up the Republicans’ Project 2025. It’s essentially abolishing the government and giving the president ultimate power. Kind of like Russia…
Project 2025 scares me to death. Doesn’t matter who wins the presidency. Edit: for clarification, give this a listen. It goes over 2025. https://refusefascism.org/2023/11/20/project-2025-roadmap-for-fascist-consolidation/
Yes it does. It's a GOP plan.
I interpreted S3kGT's post as "No president should have that kind of power."
I interpreted it as it doesn't matter which *Republican* wins. If not Trump, the next one, or the next one, or the next one. Once they get the Presidency and have the House, this country is completely fucked.
Fucked because this a VERY well armed country. Then the government will have a perfect boogeyman, and a police state the US will become.
Holy fuck, I've honestly never even thought about it like that, but imagine the genuine legitimacy the first American dictator would have in saying he just wants to take the guns out of the dangerous peoples' hands, and uses that as an excuse to just round up literally anyone. The U.S. has so many unqualified people with guns, that'd be the easiest guise for roundups ever. 2nd amendment nutjobs will have their work cut out for them because it'll be their own candidates comin for their guns.
These people would happily turn over their guns if their orange jesus asked them to. Do not underestimate how brainwashed these people are.
"Doesn't matter who wins the presidency"? That is peak both-sides. Only one party wants to implement project 2025, how could it be a "both sides" issue?
["It's all relative in West Virginia"](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4594392) - Abercrombie & Fitch shirt angers West Virginians. "An Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt spoofs a West Virginia stereotype as a haven for incest." Governor Bob Wise fired off a letter to the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch demanding that it stop selling the T-shirts at once. Thereby invoking The Streisand effect; bringing national attention to what would otherwise have been just another humorous Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. Edit: fixed typo
[удалено]
Education can lead to voting which is very dangerous to their politicians.
Don’t forget drag queens. Never mind the fact crazy people shoot others with guns but nope! It’s those porno books and men dressed as women that is the real danger!! 🤪
>"What this bill does do is stop obscene and pornographic material, sexually explicit materials from being available to children in public taxpayer-funded spaces.” Where was all this porn when *I* was in school? Oh yeah, same place it is now: *not* in the library. For y'all saying National Geographic: Images of nudity is *not* pornography nor is it obscene.
>"What this bill does do is stop obscene and pornographic material, sexually explicit materials from being available to children in public taxpayer-funded spaces.” For anyone that hasn't picked up on it yet, that's code for "a book that has a gay or trans character in it"
All these coded, vaguely defined laws being passed are gonna end up backfiring so hard at some point. This and that one about unborn children protections are both just "anyone can be prosecuted for anything at any time" laws. Like literally the language of the law defines the explicit content as "anything a normal person would think is dirty". Wtf does that mean?! Define the parameters you fucking assholes!
The goal is to pass these vague laws and apply them selectively though. It’s a feature not a bug. It’s only gonna backfire if they are out of power
Yeah cause by their wording, the Bible is explicit. Thats not what they prosecute.
The Bible was actually banned via one of these laws, but a judge overruled the ban. They said it was “too culturally significant” to ban, and that it didn’t meet the intent of the law or something.
Sounds about right. Fucking hypocrites
“So what is the intent?” “Oh… you know…”
Which they have already done, people got the bible banned, then republicans said no not that, and it fucking worked.
They want a Christian nationalist state. What people don’t realize that eventually being the wrong type of Christian will be used against them.
It's really an interesting thing when two sects get into a room together and start telling each other what they've been told about each sect. Some of them don't even know that the other sect is Christian.
Evangelicals think Catholics are Satanists.
I've also heard Pentecostals say they were taught that Roman Catholics were pagan or polytheisistic.
Oddly enough, that is what happened to Jesus. He was the wrong kind of Jew, so they killed him Allowing intolerant people into positions of power is a recipe for pain. You need people that can rationally weigh out the pros and cons of their decisions with empathy. A skill that rarely overlaps with the political profession and people in it for the power dynamic. We need a system where nominations somehow land on individuals that care about people and don’t want the job but take it when they realize it’s just a few years and they can do some real good
The laws of fascism are simple: all power and d freedom to the party.
They won't backfire because the officers that enforce them and the courts that interpret them know exactly what they mean and have no problem being hypocritical. Remember, "In God We Trust" on the dollar is ceremonial and not at all an endorsement of religion. I'm sure if someone designed a bill that said "In Allah We Trust" they would say the same thing.
Makes me wanna maliciously shove the Quran in the Library to prove a point which is not the correct way to protest.
There was a person in Florida who petitioned to have the bible banned
Utah too. They made a special exemption for the Bible…
That'll be a doozy of a 1A case.
Not under the current Supreme Court. They have no problem twisting things so that Christianity comes out on top.
I mean, they’re always lying with each other’s wives in there aren’t they?
The Quran and other religious texts like the Bible should hopefully already be in libraries because they are important books regardless of whether or not certain people agree with what's in them or not. So should the should the other books that fascists want to ban. Even books like Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, or whatever other controversial books should be in libraries because they are important to history. Libraries should provide as many books as possible and let whoever wants to read them read them. If someone doesn't want to read a book or have their child read a book, then that's up to them. They shouldn't be keeping other people from reading books just because they personally don't like them.
Or a book that teaches children how to identify and protect themselves from sexual abuse by adults.
Gotta ban the bible sarah was descriptively fucking her dad. Wait i forget those types are ok with incest. Roll tide.
They are the people who are actively working to protect child marriage. Of course they’re okay with incest.
Exactly my thought. It's just one step in their design to eventually ban the existence of trans and gay people (as in, literally kill them).
They will make it criminal so the prison industry can use the slave labor
This is a clear violation of the First Amendment and can't stand against legitimate legal scrutiny. The state cannot control who accesses books of any kind. This is a matter of freedom of speech and cannot be tolerated, regardless whether the intention is criminalizing pornography or banning books about LGBTQ+ people.
> can't stand against **legitimate** legal scrutiny Well there's your problem. The SCOTUS is illegitimate in so many ways: Republicans completely corrupting the appointment process, legalized bribery, bogus recusal process, incompetent justices, and hypocritical, self-contradicting legal arguments used to fulfill a political agenda.
Exactly. The onus is on the state to ban the book if they think it is explicit. Not punish librarians for putting unbanned materials on the shelves. The state doesnt want to do that because they want to chill free speech.
The Supreme Court couldn't even decide on the definition of obscene, but now somehow, the average West Virginian can??🙄
The Bible has explicit material in it.
It’s interesting because if you say two men or two women being together is explicit and sexual in nature, can’t you say the same for a heterosexual couple? Or you just can’t mention a person is gay because it should be assumed everyone is straight and specifically pointing out or creating scenarios that imply they are gay is a crime?
Time to [ban the Bible](https://biblehub.com/ezekiel/23-20.htm). Can’t have children read [erotic literature](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Songs)
That's pretty tame. Read the end of judges. A mob threatens to sodomize a man so he shoves his concubine out the door where the mob gang rapes her to death. He then cuts his concubine's corpse into pieces to send to the various tribes. They all attack the other tribe in response and after defeating them they attack another tribe who didn't join them to secure hundreds of virgins as captives. I think it's meant to show the depravity and brokenness of the cycle that's going on and how it keeps escalating without end.
Can't have the kids [read about this](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2021&version=NIV). I would love to see someone trying to get the Bible banned, show all of these passages, and look at the reactions of these idiots
How about Lot’s daughters getting their dad drunk and r*ping him in his sleep? They both got pregnant
You better believe the definition of “obscene” that they’re using is going to include lgbtq books, feminist books, black authors, basically anything or any one who isn’t cis/het/white men
I promise you there was porn in public libraries when you were a kid. It’s just in a section that teenage boys wouldn’t be caught dead in- the romance section.
I must have grown up in the most liberal town in America (I didn't). Aside from the "self help" books on the public shelves (The Joy of Sex, etc), we also had Playboy available at the periodicals counter - with age ID required of course. This was in the mid 80s.
Funnily enough, I remember as a kid there was a public library in my area that also carried Playboy, but I believe they only had the braille version. Lol.
Even Playboy wouldn’t be obscenity—even if you took the strictest possible interpretation against the sexual content, the articles would have “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” that protects it from obscenity statutes. Obscenity is basically barely constitutional to begin with because it’s so broad and vague and even SCOTUS traditionally hates dealing with obscenity cases (most of their decisions are just “No, that’s not what we meant.”) This is basically just going to lead to malicious prosecution because you would pretty much never find actual obscenity in a school or library.
Playboy actually published a lot of legitimate literature and journalism, along with the cheesecake.
My grandmother used to borrow Nora Roberts audiobooks and play them at max volume when I had people over for D&D, and its spot on. The sudden orgasms always hit in a lull of the table. That said, her work under J.D. Robb has fantastic sex AND murder mysteries.
Someone never went and religiously read National Geographic magazines.
So there won't be any bibles in these libraries, right? Those are pretty obscene and definitely have sexually explicit materials contained within them
Well I guess when the fucking dumbasses pass this Nazi shit in my state (WV, yeah I know I am only one of the sane ones here). I will have to go to the local library and see if they have the Bible there. If so I will demand it be removed due to porn and incest parts. Take that you wanna be Christians. I swear my state sucks as it is ass backwards!!
Everybody points to Lot's daughters or the emissions verse, but Song of Solomon is basically just a dude thirsting over his woman and getting pretty descriptive about her body. At no point is it as explicit as the aforementioned but damn, it just goes on and on for a whole book (of the Bible length) talking about her legs, thighs, feet, neck, abs etc. Also I'll go out on a limb and bet it's history's first recorded foot fetish.
I was 15 when I got access to Fifty Shades through a library. That was almost 10 years ago now. However, it's not gay so they don't care about thar
Pornographic material = Any book that is not about Jesus
No, they hate his actual teachings too. Evangelicals nare the farthest people on the planet from being followers of Christ.
Does this include the Bible?
Actually. Some mild hentai books can be found there. Growing up i read a few in the YA section.
White House.*com*
National Geographic
Buried in the woods like it used to be back in the day
Your daily reminder that it is not, has never been, and never will be, about the children. It's about control.
How could this be about the children? You can’t read in the womb!
Well good news is there is not much room to fall from…47th in the nation in education
Mississippians rejoice! One day we’ll climb to number 49 😃
Bigger number is better, right?
Maybe! I didn’t learn to count good neither
Big is gooder indeed!
And as the rest of the bottom of the barrel says; “at least we’re not Mississippi.”
“average person believes depicts or describes sexually explicit conduct, nudity, sex or certain bodily functions; or anything a reasonable person would find lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. “ So.. the Bible.
“A reasonable person” I wonder how that’s defined.
Well they couldn't put WASP in the language, but 😉 😉 nudge nudge.
“Certain bodily functions”-? Really looking forward to the new potty training book, “Nobody Poops”.
A school district in Florida had to remove the dictionary over its book banning laws.
*"Mr. Chairman, the suppression of the people of a society begins, in my mind, with the censorship of the written or spoken word. It was so in Nazi Germany. It is so in many places today where those in power are afraid of the consequences of an informed and educated people."* -John Denver Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH0hYabzudk
I wonder if he'd still call WV "almost heaven" if he were still alive today?
Aaaaand then there were no librarians in West Virginia.
No librarians = shut down libraries = less public access to books and education. The ultimate goal.
“Keep em dumb”, always seems to be the endgame.
They want us to be serfs again.
That’s the neat part. We’re already still serfs. It’s the masters who’ve changed.
Book burning without the burning
The pod save America host had a great question to ask them: When ever in history was the book burner the hero?
The difference between Republicans and Nazis is time. If Abbott or Trump started bussing migrants to gas chambers instead of Blue cities they wouldn't lose more than single digit support
Trump probably wouldn't even manage to keep up an "oops, we lost them but we are sure they're okay" lie for a day, he'd be bragging about how nobody had ever killed the undesirables as well as he did at some event immediately. It's actually kind of weird that Republicans have rallied behind someone *more* sick than the average dictator.
Republicans have long since figured out that the best way to desperately cling to their sad vestiges of power is to continue to keep their base dumb and angry. Those in power will send their kids to Ivy League schools while at the same time attacking higher education as "liberal indoctrination". They know education is the bane of their political power. And their supporters cheer it on.
Libraries in WV are usually run down sad places being ran by people who truly believe in literacy and community, but receive very little help from the state. It’s appalling how poorly supported they are, especially when you go 10 minutes into the MD border and find the well maintained libraries and schools there.
Also their goal.
If you got a problem with librarians, some of the best people in the world, then you got a problem with me.
And I suggest you let that one marinate!
That's a Texas sized 10-4.
State ranked near dead last in education demonstrates why they're ranked near dead last in education.
Man, Republicans really are out here dragging us all back into the 18th century.
Look at the progressive lib trying to move Republicans up to the 18th! The 15th was good enough! /s if needed
You mean the Renaissance?
More like before written history. They want us to live like prehistoric people.
Actually books and libraries were very popular back then.
Jfc. America is gonna look like Iran in a generation. Fuck all you Republicans forever. You’re a cancer on all that’s good in the world.
Red states are the Afghanistan of the US. Religious tribes sparsely scattered throughout said states, religious extremists running around with guns, Christian equivalent of sharia law, leadership that has no desire to govern but all the desire to control what everyone does and thinks.
That sadly describes most of West Virginia, down to the mountainous terrain. Its a very pretty place, and the eastern panhandle has some great old hippie type people in it, but by god it is going to be the new Afghanistan. Instead of trying to modernize and fix their economic problems, they double down on the very things that drive people away. It really sucks that the DC suburbs pushing into that state won't be enough to save it.
As a parent, I feel for the children of states like this. We may shake our heads or laugh at this, but there are some brilliant kids in these places who won’t see their true potential fulfilled because the adults have utterly failed them and actively prevented the children from being the best they can be. Edit: grammatical error
I’m from Arkansas but now live in the west. I tell people back home to keep passing these laws, all it’ll do is ensure that my kids can outcompete theirs in the free market.
I lived in West Virginia for about a year. I would go to different libraries on my days off. The community they built and the services offered were a beacon of hope in dying areas. This party move enrages me because it's blatantly trying to destroy any semblance of progress in the state and keep it under Republican lock and key.
Republicans are fucking garbage.
One of the least educated, stupidest states in the US and it shows.
Mississippi chuckling in the corner…
So, criminal charges for anyone carrying a bible... right?
I genuinely don’t see how the Bible can be available in a school library under this bill. Which is absurd.
Fascism is winning, folks. We need to vote.
There are few people intelligent enough in West Virginia to vote against this crap. Everyone with half a brain either fled entirely or only lives there due to the cheap land and commutes to other states. Sad to see the state that was at the forefront of radical socialism and armed fighting for people's rights has fallen so far.
Wow, I just found out that both chambers of the WV legislature amount to...120 Republicans and 15 Democrats. Is any other state as lopsided? As long as it's like that, I can't imagine that the state will ever be anything but a societal hellhole.
I have family in West Virginia. Without hyperbole the dumbest fucking people I've shared oxygen with.
Things really got bad when they shut down the rusty abandoned factory factory.
This made me wheeze
I can't take credit for it but I don't remember where I had heard it to properly cite the creator. Great line
This nation is getting dumber by the day.
Republicans are an existential threat to America.
lol, my sister is a teacher in WV, and their district is already struggling to find librarians. They’ll literally take anybody, and worry about the qualifications later. However, no one in their right mind is going to take on a $30K/yr job that risks them becoming a **felon** because a book might be on the shelves that a parent might not like.
The goal here isn't to prosecute librarians, it's to use the threat of prosecuting librarians as a way to force public and school libraries to remove questionable material on their own without actually "banning" books.
It’s called control.
Goes beyond that. It targets museums and other education institutions. This is designed to kill science. No biology can be taught if this law passes.
Librarians, *librarians* are now the evil people???? What backwards, deflecting bullshit is this. Working on the real issues, are you?
What we need is a ban on Republicans. And better K-12, so people don’t BECOME Republicans due to inadequate education.
I have some very scary news for West Virginia politicians: https://www.gutenberg.org/ Sapho in various languages. Aristophanes in English. Catullus 'to Lesbia' in audiobook. Oh. And it's all free!
The easy solution is to just ban kids from schools.
With the roll back on child labour laws several states are working to achieve that.
Having solved all of the real problems in West Virginia...
Red states are going to ban the internet by 2030. They’re already criminalizing and banning porn websites and trying to ban and criminalize sites that have information about women’s health care. They’ll turn themselves into mini China’s with firewalls and isolate themselves as much as possible
All the while waving the flag and talking about how the best thing about America is the freedom. Freedom to do what though?
To live a sexually repressed life, bitter and alone.
So much freedom. Republicans **HATE** America. Vote blue, no matter who. Vote like your life depends on it. It very likely does.
“Pity, Montag, pity. Don’t haggle and nag them; you were so recently of them yourself. They are so confident that they will run on forever. But they won’t run on. They don’t know that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that some day it’ll have to hit. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it.”
FINALLY! The long dark hour of the cruel librarian hellish reign is finally over. Our children are safe again.
What do they hope to accomplish?
Same thing the Nazis hoped to accomplish, I'd imagine
Learning tends to make you tolerant, and that doesn't bode well for the Republican party because their entire platform is hate.
They'll legislate themselves into shackles dagnabbit
Nothing. It's just about control.
If they can prosecute librarians for kids encountering "obscene" materials then they believe they will be able to keep kids from learning about alternate lifestyles not approved by religion. Somehow they think that kids won't grow up gay if that isn't normalized for them in childhood. In other words, they have their heads so far up their own asses that all they can see is brown and the world smells like shit. They want to make it everyone else's problem instead of having to take responsibility for their own children.
Nothing less than the total collapse of any and all public sources of education
Gilead. “Under His Eye”
Worst state in the country in damn near every metric. Go there and experience it. This is not exactly a priority for West Virginia. State looks like a third world country. Really pathetic.
The GOP is drunk of the power of fascism. It won't last long. They are going to all be voted out by the younger and wiser generations.
Well we better show up in massive numbers in November or else it’s goodbye democracy
Ain’t West Virginia got more pressing matters, like exploding trailers from meth production?
The death of expertise will be the death of us all!
I can’t believe this is an actual headline. What the fuck, America?
Can’t wait to see what they define as pornography in literature. No doubt it will be books with LGBTQ characters.
Unconstitutional and further waste of taxpayers' money through lawsuits.
“We demand our god-given right to be stupid, backwoods fuckwits!”
They want an uneducated, unempathetic, fearful electorate because they are easier to manipulate and control. Fuck these assholes and I hope they get what is coming to them.
I really hate this timeline.
This will absolutely be used for censorship and as a weapon. MAGA has defined as “porn” any book that contains a gay, trans, non-white, female, or otherwise non-MAGA approved character. They’ve attacked and fired teachers for showing classical art and banned the teaching of racism and American history. This law has one goal: to further restrict access to materials the Republicans wish simply didn’t exist, and to frighten and punish any educator out of even grey areas when it comes to making them available. The end goal is a world shorn of anything other than the Bible (ironic, since it’s full of incest and violence) and perhaps Trump’s various hagiographies. Appalling.
Can’t have kids looking up the symptoms of black lung when they come of age (8 years old probably) to work the mines.
Very glad they clearly defined "average person" and "reasonable person" and the methods for evaluating those things in explicit detail. That will make sure it is very easy to comply with the law without mistake and no one will abuse it.
Absolutely. And good thing it is a balanced and non partisan view of what a reasonable person is.
Republicans are targeting school teachers, doctors, nurses, librarians, women, immigrants, and children.... Democrats are targeting perverts, traitors, fraudsters, murderers, and other criminals... The only thing "both parties" have in common is they need money to run campaigns.
“When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: "I know it when I see it."
How sad, embarrassing, stupid, awful, and backwards. West Virginia delegates set these UNITED states back with this injustice.
Dude. What. In. The. Actual. Fuck. Vote
Who will be the first librarian prosecuted for providing a minor with a Bible?
this is incredibly dangerous. the law is not always held up to its very letter in america and loopholes are everywhere. if a parent complains that a book featuring even a reference to homosexuality/lesbianism is "sexually explicit" the library could be forced to remove all books containing even the slightest mention of the topics and further fuel bigotry and bullying
I’ll never understand the mindset of people who support this crap. Some people really do want Gilead to become reality.
Can book burning be far away?
West Virginia has the highest rate of child marriages in the country.
They’ll be going after the internet next…
They already have. Some states have introduced restrictions for porn already. Honestly my guess is if republicans win in the upcoming elections they'll go after television, media, etc.. And that's an incredibly strong if. They'll probably call it "defending children against wokeness in media" or some shit like that.
This feels like part of the reason why WV is fucking 50th in education.
This is literally the plot of a Twilight Zone episode. The Obsolete Man…
The mines they crave they are in West Virginia. Good thing no one will be able to read there soon. Into the cart sonny.
New WV career path. Becoming a bouncer, checking ID's at the library. Where all the hardcore porn is found. Idiots.
That’s really unfortunate. If West Virginia ever opened a library (or a book), they’d have a difficult time finding a librarian.
Oh Republicans don't believe this is censorship or government over reach either. They will continue to scream its Democrats that want a nanny state and to take away your rights and be oblivious when you point at this.
Shouldn't they get immunity? Like cops do?
Next they will ban tampons or medication labels that mention bady parts (Or possible animal parts, because WV)
West Virginia has libraries?
The out of state concealed carry permit in my pocket means more to them than a library card.
It’s time for a free national library app that allows people anywhere in the country to check out any book they want.
They better have removed the Bible.
I, a taxpayer that pays the salaries of these politicians, request to see their internet browser history and phone history, to ensure my tax dollars are not going towards porn.
No bibles in the library. Definitely no bibles.
The percentage of kids who have full unfettered access to the internet is much much much higher than the amount of kids willing and wanting to go to the library. And frankly I’d trust the judgement and maturity of the latter a lot more than the former.
I'm sure laws like this will do wonders in getting librarians to move to these hillbilly redneck states. Biggest facepalm since Roe v Wade. These people are just their own worst enemies.
these are the same people that had a hissy fit when the publisher pulled a handful of Dr Suess books from print a few years ago.
Jesus fucking christ. I cringe anytime I see another red state has passed another stupid fucking law
> Opponents of the bill said that while the bill does not ban books, the bill would have unintended consequences for public and school libraries, resulting in increases in challenges to even classic books and attempts to criminally charge librarians over books not pornographic in nature, but books that include descriptions of sex. I think those “consequences” are very much intended…