Tyrubias 2026-02-27 04:17 UTC link

It’s honestly terrifying that efforts to ban books and restrict what teachers can teach have made such a big comeback in the US. When I was in school, we always discussed banned books from the perspective of “we used to ban things that made people uncomfortable in the bad old days, but that could never happen in the 21st century”. Obviously that glossed over a lot of nuance, but it still shocks me as an adult seeing repression we discussed only from a historical perspective make its way back into the legislature.

Part of the purpose of education is exposing students to strange, uncomfortable, and even frightening ideas and giving them the tools to critically think about and even empathize with such ideas. They don’t have to even be “useful” ideas, since it’s important that students are given the tools to grow and become anything they want. It seems like a lot of groups around the country just want students to grow up to become drones working to prop up the economy. Anything that might make people question the nature of society or their role in it must be suppressed according to them.

johnnyanmac 2026-02-27 04:31 UTC link

> prohibiting use of funds under the act “to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.

"For other purposes" is going to be doing a Herculean effort of carrying for the next few years if this passes. for example:

>This bill includes “lewd” and “lascivious” dancing as prohibited topics or themes.

I guess we learned nothing from Footloose.

----

And yes, for a TLDR on the article and the general situation of this the last decease or so: such book bans tends to be a roundabout way to associate "sexually oriented" topics with the trans community. Sometimes the entire LGBT umbrella is hit.

Pre-epstien, I'd be surprised that such people care much more about what goes on with a person's state of being than the person themselves. But it really seems like every accusation is a confession.

yaky 2026-02-27 04:33 UTC link

This is creepily similar to Russia circa 10+ years ago with its "gay propaganda" and "child protection" laws, and strong government support for the church.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-ban...

Spivak 2026-02-27 04:41 UTC link

And we're finally here on the national stage.

1. Ban exposing minors to "sexual material." Who would be against that? Surely only weirdos would push to expose kids to sex and pornography. Make sure this gets challenged in court and that it's found constitutional under 1A.

2. Define things we don't like as sexual material. Obviously being gay is entirely about sex, just like being trans is about genitals. You don't even have to speculate that this is the motive—it's defined explicitly in the bill.

3. Boom, you found a legal way to ban what would otherwise be a pretty obvious 1A violation.

This is the public institutions half, it's harder to swing a bill like this for private institutions which is why that's handled with age verification bills. That way it's not technically a ban.

JohnTHaller 2026-02-27 04:50 UTC link

Republicans keep telling everyone who they are. But a good chunk of folks keep denying it.

gdulli 2026-02-27 04:54 UTC link

Sorry, the toothpaste doesn't go back into the tube with social issues. Interracial marriage isn't going away either lol.

ThrowawayTestr 2026-02-27 05:01 UTC link

Man, anything to distract people from the files.

ufocia 2026-02-27 05:14 UTC link

Doesn't look like a ban, a mere withholding of federal funds.

SilverElfin 2026-02-27 05:53 UTC link

Age verification (porn bans), VPN bans, restrictions on 3D printing - all of these are other policies, both proposed and already in law, that make additional violations of individual rights easier to pass, because these things have been normalized. It’s why the slippery slope isn’t always a logical fallacy.

Dig1t 2026-02-27 06:23 UTC link

If you can buy the book on Amazon or find it at your local library is the book really "banned"?

zoklet-enjoyer 2026-02-27 06:53 UTC link

The rep who introduced the bill quoted Hitler in a speech 2 days into her term. And then she spent the next 5 years advocating for horrible, repressive legislation. Disgusting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Miller_(politician)#:~:te...

koonsolo 2026-02-27 06:55 UTC link

And in other news, the Trump appointed ambassador in Belgium, Bill White, is fine with adult men sucking the blood from a baby penis.

And if you think I'm kidding, no I'm not.

Some of those boys end up with herpes, but it's all fine in MAGA land.

Source, straight from the horses mouth: https://youtu.be/KolvU5m0CZI?si=KMnq_y8KfGuhXkDY&t=410

givemeethekeys 2026-02-27 06:57 UTC link

Why is there a federal department of education, anyway? Shouldn't the states be fully responsible for educating their population?

Perenti 2026-02-27 07:43 UTC link

Could you claim any book with boys being different to girls breaches the sex talk rules? I'm just wondering how you could use this law to show how ridiculous it is.

TrnsltLife 2026-02-27 20:48 UTC link

Good. Hopefully we can get a government contract with Boston Dynamics robot dogs wielding flamethrowers to enforce it too.

silexia 2026-02-27 21:47 UTC link

Not a book ban, but not using public funds to push a hotly contested culture war point.

PearlRiver 2026-02-27 04:54 UTC link

In the real world each and every one of us has to function at a workplace with people from every race and religion.

viraptor 2026-02-27 05:36 UTC link

Have your seen the 60s/70s photos from Iran? https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/iran-before-revolution-phot...

It just depends how much the government wants to go fundamental and how much people allow it.

FuckButtons 2026-02-27 05:39 UTC link

Weimar Germany was very socially liberal, homosexuality was socially accepted, legal rights for women were the same as for men, and all of that definitely went away quite quickly.

viraptor 2026-02-27 05:39 UTC link

> such book bans tends to be a roundabout way to associate "sexually oriented" topics with the trans community

Yup. When books get banned for containing actual sexual content, that gets reverted https://www.newsweek.com/bible-banned-texas-schools-over-sex...

mindslight 2026-02-27 05:45 UTC link

What files?

russdill 2026-02-27 05:47 UTC link

They revoked driver's licenses of transgender individuals in Kansas giving only 3 days notice.

beej71 2026-02-27 05:48 UTC link

I can't tell if this is just trolling or a genuine take. I'm any case, it's too simplistic.

palmotea 2026-02-27 05:53 UTC link

> Sorry, the toothpaste doesn't go back into the tube with social issues. Interracial marriage isn't going away either lol.

Sorry, that's just naive, overconfident liberalism. There is no mandatory "direction" to social change. Given enough time, every bit of that toothpaste will go back in that tube, and enough more time it will come out again, only to go back in after a spell. And it won't be an oscillation. It'll be some weird path none of us can predict.

_alaya 2026-02-27 05:55 UTC link

You are either completely uneducated on world history or willfully ignorant.

There is no limit on how far back the clock is allowed to turn.

Things that will be targeted:

* homosexuals (often the first)

* non whites

* interracial marriage

* voting rights

* voting right for women

* women’s suffrage

* education for girls

* no fault divorce

* freedom of speech

* freedom of mobility (like to leave the country)

* trade unions / labor unions

* Freemasons (Oddfellows, etc)

* practicing a religion other than Christianity

* environmental regulations

* public lands, federal parks

* etc etc etc

Look not to China or North Korea for the operating model but East Germany during the Cold War. There was a massive surveillance operation in place then and technology has only improved.

Freedom is not guaranteed and for most of human history was not a goal.

vkou 2026-02-27 05:58 UTC link

MAGA is just United Russia with a different supreme leader. The end-game is the same - a vaguely lipservice-Christian[1] autocracy.

When they tell you of all the insane shit they want, believe them. They are an existential threat to the republic, because they don't place any value any of the immutable principles of the republic, and will sell all of them up the river to see their guy win.

---

[1] Their actual behavior is incredibly un-Christ-like.

adamors 2026-02-27 05:59 UTC link

No, a good chunk of folks like this and knowingly support this.

BLKNSLVR 2026-02-27 06:07 UTC link

... by any other name

BrenBarn 2026-02-27 07:14 UTC link

My recollection is discussing banned books from the perspective of "people have done and still do this elsewhere in the US, but we don't do it here".

WalterBright 2026-02-27 07:28 UTC link

There are always going to be fights about what gets taught in schools, and what isn't. It's an inevitable consequence of government run schools. I don't agree that it is a free speech issue.

Children do not have the full set of adult rights.

StopDisinfo910 2026-02-27 07:55 UTC link

It has similarity in that there is a form of alliance between predominantly white fundamentalist catholics and evangelical christians and Trump which is embodied by Vance which could be seen as mimicking Putin proximity with the Orthodox church. They both use their churches to justify a civilizational agenda and frame autocracy as protection.

Still, there are several major differences one bieng the patriarch supporting Putin while the Catholic church mostly opposes Trump.

StopDisinfo910 2026-02-27 08:09 UTC link

I deeply oppose MAGA but the idea of winning through the take over of the cultural institution - school, universities, the media - has been theorized by Gramsci followers like Marcuse and Horkheimer.

In a lot of way, what we are witnessing in a counter movement swinging opposite to the heavy push for critical theory in the public sphere. Critical theory is not neutral. It is teleological in nature.

Schools have been a battle ground for decades I fear.

chneu 2026-02-27 08:56 UTC link

Didn't a bunch of kids in NYC get STIs cuz of this like a decade or two ago? A bunch of rabbis were biting baby dicks, oh sorry I mean performing a religious ceremony, and giving kids STIs.

Eddy_Viscosity2 2026-02-27 12:37 UTC link

If it can't really be banned, then why waste all the time and energy passing this law?

thrance 2026-02-27 13:41 UTC link

These policies are symptoms of the authoritarian zeitgeist, not its causes. We will keep getting more and more of them until people start believing in democracy again. In that sense, I don't think it's a slippery slope, since one policy doesn't automatically lead to another.

sershe 2026-02-27 18:42 UTC link

Not at all, the Russian ban was an outright speech restriction (I'm originally from Russia). This only applies to schools taking federal money. This is much more similar to pressuring institutions taking federal money to do things, by both parties, like adding or removing diversity programs, mandating wage levels, curtailing due process for sexual assault investigations, investigating alleged fraud, etc. There are actually colleges that are very careful about not taking federal money where it would affect them.

The approach that most people in the US seem to favor is "this is totally fine that the right-thinking government can do this, the problem is that the other guys occasionally get to rule".

The real solution is to remove the levers, or the federal spending, so that neither side can do it.

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