Ouch.
To be clear they are making some noise about how Utah’s book banning laws should be expanded to include mini free “take a book/leave a book” libraries set up on private property. There is no way a law like that would be upheld in court.
I think the sad part is that any of this even exists at all. If you don’t like a book, don’t read it. That’s all…no need to ban anything just because it offends your fragile ego.
So someone could put a banned book in their neighbors little library and get them criminally charged? Like the whole point of those is so people can leave and take books.
Would be a shame if someone could just shut down neighbourhood charity like that, if this discouraged even having these libraries, if the free exchange of thoughts beyond the control of those who don’t want their supremacy challenged was hamstrung like that…
Fucking assholes. This is why can’t have nice things: Because someone will inevitably ruin it for others to compensate their own misery.
That’s the goal. They don’t want anyone to be able read, learn, see, or think about anything that is contradictes their narrative/world view. These are the death rattles of a dying ideology. (Conservative and neo-liberal)
They will become more violent and ravenous as time goes on. I just hope the science and rational thinkers win out before the conservatives and Neo-Liberals drive humanity off the cliff.
The Church of Latter Day Saints can’t die fast enough tbh.
There is no evil like conservative ChristoFascist ideology.
I would talk to a lawyer about a message on the outside of the library, something like
“by stepping onto this property and examining the contents of this library, you and anyone you communicate the contents of this library to will automatically and irrevocably indemnify and hold blameless the maintainers of this library.”
I just don’t understand it. The internet exists. Anything your kid could find in a library is on the internet in much more extreme, unvetted forms. And unless you want to go Amish it’s going to be near impossible to keep them in a bubble. Besides the free speech hypocrisy a lot of them follow it just seems like such a waste of time.
Don’t assume it stops with books, unless we stand up to them and stop it.
They’ve been attacking the internet since at least 2011! (Arguably - even DMCA can be considered an online censorship bill, given how it’s wielded.)
In 2011, they tried Stop Online Piracy Act which would have ended privacy on the internet, silenced free speech, and made it easier to punish those who host it. It didn’t pass, but that hasn’t stopped them.
After many attempts, in 2018, FOSTA-SESTA passed, and as a result, it eroded section 230 safe harbor provisions, killing off Craigslist missed connections (and a number of other sites, too), choked off access to banking for online sex workers, and reduced the number of tools law enforcement could use to find and rescue victims of sex trafficking.
More recently, Kids Online Safety Act passed, but seems to be floundering before being sent to the president to sign. Under the guise of ‘protecting children’, this bill legalizes internet censorship, by allowing the FTC to determine what content is deemed harmful to children. Which can include information they may need to navigate the complex realities of growing up in a challenging world in changing bodies.
