This is the context - an Idaho law that penalizes any library that allows minors access to “inappropriate” content, and lets each child’s parent define what “inappropriate” means. So libraries could be penalized if, for example, a homeschooled Christian child reads a book on biology that mentions evolution or a YA novel with a gay character, and their parents object to it. Or if a liberal parent objects to their child reading the Bible or Quran.
Given the wide scope and uncertain limits of this law, some Idaho libraries are banning minors entirely. As was, I suspect, the goal.
Laws like this are becoming widespread in red states and will likely become federal law with Project 2025.
The United States is becoming a nation where parents’ right to keep their kids stupid and bigoted is more important than children’s right to learn. And if that isn’t a sign of collapse I don’t know what is.
That’s called FREEDOM LIBTARDS!
Literally. That’s why the United States didn’t ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Recognizing the rights of children would have limited the rights of parents to control their children. It would have made parents less free to do whatever they want to their kids. And we can’t have that.
(Edit: also the freedom of states to execute juvenile offenders. Forgot about that. The freedom to kill kids is vital to American culture.)
FREEDUMB
Made this just for you.
Thanks. I hate it.
Well you cant have childeren LEARN things. Then how will you control them later.
For all we know banning something will only get the kids more excited to break the rules.
Did…did the republicans just Streisand libraries?
You know authoritarian regimes always strived to keep the general population dumb. In a nation of illiterate and uneducated people there is less critisism and resistance.
If you arent worried about your democracy yet, now would be a good time to start.
Fucking Republicans.
When I was a teenager, my parents signed a permission slip to change my card from a child’s card to an unrestricted adult card because I was there so much and didn’t much care if I read “inappropriate” books. The modern persecution of libraries and censoring of content is absolutely ridiculous. It’s hard enough to get kids to look away from their phones. Now they’re not even allowed to check out a book without their parents.
California has some good rules on the book about this: https://www.scu.edu/library/policies/confidentiality/
AFAIK this applies to minors with a card, too. I have heard that in my city when a librarian gives a minor (I think over age 13?) a card, they make a point of saying, “we will never tell your parents what books you check out” (or something like thay). Obviously federal law trumps this (looking at you, Patriot Act…) but there are some places in this country sorta doing the right thing, which is heartening!
To be fair, the last kid that visited a library unsupervised ruined her father’s auto business and ran her distinguished headmaster out of town. These book readin types ruin everything, the dangers are all documented in Matilda (1988)
I searched “book burning in history” and every hit was about the Nazi’s. Pretty fitting. It’s still the Nazi’s a hundred years later.
A public library is literally the qunticential place a parent would WANT to find their child. If they’re in the library, they’re not out doing damage in town or in any physical danger. And now kids are banned. Genius.
Can you imagine having a paper to write and your mommy and daddy have to go sign an affadavit for you at the public library because you’re a 16 year old and need to be protected… from books? I went to college with a 16 year old who graduated hs early - I guess she would have needed protection from studying in the school library. Can’t have her… learning… (which, of course, is the point.)
Thankfully, conservatives are still stuck in the distant past and apparently don’t know about the internet? Or eReaders? There is zero chance of corking any of the information they are trying to surpress - so what is stage 2 of this absurdity, exactly? We need to stop this shit in it’s tracks, but we also need to be aware of the long term goals.
The goal is probably to kill library attendance numbers so that they can say nobody is going to the library, and cancel the budget. Then they’re free to use that money for other things, kick-backs to their nephew who is a housing developer, extra M16’s for the cops, or whatever.
Ah, this is probably it. In my head I forgot for a sec that it’s never ACTUALLY about protecting the kids - this is the next step.
These fucking conservatives have got me about to do a book burning protest with the Bible
They probably think that if they’re not in the library they’re spending their parents money at some store/coffee shop/restaurant. While that will be true for some I imagine the rest will roam around in hordes causing “mayhem”. Either that or the church.
My town’s middle school is right across the street from the library. Kids often end up there and it’s great and convenient
This is crazy. When I was young my friends and I went to the library a lot. We would read magazines and play tag as well as work on school projects. Banning children from a library is insane.
Old fucks don’t want children anywhere they might see them, so this shit happen.
In a small town near me (not in the US), a bylaw states that children that want to play in their street must have 2/3 of the street signing a document. Otherwise, anyone can call the cops on kids playing in the street and cops might decide to kick the off the street.
This is fucking pathetic and I can’t wait for these old cunts to leave this world so that we can move forward as a society.
Fuck you Idaho. And your potatoes
Hey, leave the potatoes out of this! They didn’t do anything wrong.
They know what they did.
Be careful, they have eyes everywhere.
I live in the Tetons (Jackson, WY), where Idaho and Wyoming meet (Wydaho). There are many tiny towns (pop ~2k) in Idaho where the public library is the only place where children can meet or study after school. This law bars access to the space as a whole because they can’t guarantee that they can block access to certain books in specific. I am genuinely heartbroken for the communities in my area.
It’s a totally fucked situation, but I’m glad the libraries are taking the malicious compliance route and standing behind the collections. These laws want them to pull everything ‘controversial’ from the shelves and go on business as usual. Good on them for drawing a line.
Sounds like it’s not even malicious compliance. The definitions are so vague that anything could be considered obscene. Safest bet for librarians there right now is to just exclude children.
Things can overlap a bit. But we all know exactly what type of ‘obscene’ things the hammer is going to come down on. This was a bid to control the content of libraries. If librarians really wanted to play it safe they would just pull the books. You’ve seen pics the boxes of what schools are discarding to comply with similar laws. The politicians don’t want to jail librarians, they want to look like they are fulfilling promises to their base, and sweep away ‘subversive’ ideologies that would undermine their power-grab. They want the trains to run on time, things to feel just normal enough that you won’t go out of your way to question authority.
Banning the under 18 is a bit like setting your house on fire to send a smoke signal. Not normal, and not a thing I think they can honestly sustain. They are burning up a core tenet of libraries:
5. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views
to try and save higher directives:
1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
2. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
Yet another reason I hope Idaho is paying attention and turns out in November.
And the even more insidious part is that (at least according to what you wrote) the law penalizes the library, not the minor who entered without permission, so teenagers trying to protest the law through civil disobedience by entering the library anyway would only get the library punished harder.
It’s modeled after the Texas abortion law which allowed anyone to sue anyone else who “aided or abetted” a prohibited abortion - so if you were a doctor, a nurse, a driver taking a woman to a clinic, a family member who helped pay for the abortion, any random Texan who knew about the abortion could sue you and get a bounty for doing it.
That law became irrelevant after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, of course. But I believe that strategy - giving ordinary citizens the power to file weaponized lawsuits against your political enemies, giving them a financial incentive to do so, and then turning them loose - is going to be seen as transformative in American politics. It’s one of the greatest Republican legal innovations in the last two decades. It gives those tiny radical conservative special interest groups, populated by Quiverfull homeschooled kids who went to law school and joined the Heritage Foundation to fight for God in the courtroom, an enormous amount of power - and it means, if you’re doing something Republicans don’t like, you have an enormous potential liability, because anyone could sue you at any time. And since you’re guaranteed to have a conservative judge in most jurisdictions in the United States, very few organizations are going to take that risk.
Conservatives spent the last two generations fighting to capture the judicial branch. And they succeeded. And now they’re trying to funnel more and more power away from other branches of government and to the judicial system so they can exploit that power. And they’re doing it very, very, effectively.
There’s books about sex in there. Someone might see a picture of a boob without their consent. Might as well install a full liquor bar and a stripper pole.
Thank God, what kind of drinks and titties they got in there?
I am heterosexual but I fucking love Mike Judge
Seems like an easy 1A case for the kids. How is this not going to flop?
