Originally published at: Florida school district declares books with LBGTQ+ "characters and themes cannot exist" | Boing Boing
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The genocidal nature of their rhetoric comes through
What they are trying to say is “LBGTQ people cannot exist”
This is what right wingers think of the right to free speech and to exist peaceably.
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So, all books.
You say that like it’s not a desired outcome for these Know-Nothings.
Attacks against LGBTQ+ people are ultimately attacks on all of us.
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why is it that folks who are burning books never see themselves as the baddies?
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Yup.
Books are easier to outlaw than people, but this is the path to outlawing LGBTQ+ people.
Just like it was last time.
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Leviticus 18:22, “And you shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female”.
The Bible certainly entertains this as possible behaviour; better start banning Bibles from school libraries.
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The “guidance” provided to local teachers and librarians is so out of the scope of the law as written, too.
I used to think the Repubs were just lazy and incompetent for writing such vague and crappy laws. Maybe they are that, too, but now I see how the vagaries can be weaponized at this level of enforcement.
Poorly written laws are dangerous, regardless of the original intent.
Poorly written laws with originally evil intent (like this one) should be fought at every turn.
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Are school board seats the biggest disparity between how much power and influence they can exert and how much attention the average American pays them?
This kind of bigotry isn’t limited to places like Florida. These assholes sneak in all over the place.
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They are going to need some industrial furnaces to burn all those books.
And once all the books are gone, how will those furnaces be used? Hmmm?
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I wish I could give the District the benefit of the doubt and assume this is Malicious Compliance, but I will not hold my breath.
The District will probably appreciate emptying the librarys of most everything. Real cost savings.
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Not to mention Job offering up his daughters to the neighbors who wanted to rape his presumably male-presenting angelic guests. Sounds like that book can’t exist.
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This was, of course, always the goal, and everyone who was arguing otherwise was being completely disingenuous. (So “told you so” doesn’t work on any of the “centrists” who were denying this was the end-point of such laws.) And it’s not just LGBTQ+ characters, but any character that even might be gay gets censored.
Yep, the vagueness of such laws allows the unequal application against in-groups and out-groups. (Although this is a pretty extreme example of the phenomenon as we’re now at the point where the actual text of the law pretty much gets ignored in favor of the unwritten goal of the law, even when it conflicts with the written text. The law becomes nothing but a placeholder for something else entirely, as the people enforcing it know that the legal system will allow the unequal application when challenged.)
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Perhaps because the one book they claim to believe is often called The Good Book, and with that designation how could they be the baddies?
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I think you have Job and Lot confused there.
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What about Ace/Aro characters? Surely they’re queer, so they shouldn’t be here either?
Of course, it’s hard to be sure who’s ace and who’s cis-het but not pursuing a relationship right now (look at how long we assumed Mr Sulu was straight) so just ban any book with anyone not in a committed heterosexual relationship. Only consummated within Christian marriage of course.
They’ll get so much shelf space left.
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It’s not lazy. The vagaries are very deliberate. Likely with lots of extra effort to create exactly the desired vagueness.
The law creates a liability. Risk adverse organizations, and insurers, will take actions to avoid the liability created by the law. The more risk adverse the organization, the more they’ll work to avoid any liability. The larger the vagueness, the more stuff they’ll avoid. Actual enforcement becomes irrelevant, the risk avoidance creates the behavior.
In this case, giving the benefit of the doubt that the guidance is risk based, the vagueness means all books create a potential liability and hence all books must go. Even if that potential liability is very remote and only created by the “sloppy” language of the law.
(That benefit of the doubt is likely being to gracious. They could push back and chose not to.)
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Who is to say none of those characters have a secret side relationship of a different type?
You could start a rumor or fan site that indicates this additional information. (It’s the Internet, it probably already exists.)
Safer to just ban every book then. Wouldn’t want to risk the liability of missing one.
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And don’t forget all the Subtext about David and Saul
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“Probably” he says.
Although there are ones that are probably OK, that site as a whole is NSFW.
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You’re thinking of Lot, the man who was later raped by those same nameless daughters.
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