Utah Bans 13 books from state schools

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I think the discussion is going in circles now. If you think you have something insightful to say on this topic, say it now, because I'll be closing this thread in about 10 hours time.

Totally agree. It's extremely difficult to say anything new without getting political. I'm outta here.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by rcentros

You can't have it both ways. Either children are minors whom parents are responsible for, or they're adults.

Huh, what a strange worldview. Children are minors. Parents have a duty to protect them, but children are people with their own rights. For that matter, everybody in a society should protect children, regardless of who their parents are.

By law, in the United States, children are minors until they are 18 (and parent's are responsible for their actions). Since that is the law, parents have the right to restrict what kind of material they're kids read.

I wasn't talking about the current state of legal rights in USA, I was talking about what are - in my opinion - moral rights.

So you claim. Do you really think kids are that ignorant about this subject because they're "deprived" of reading smut?

Some kids may be ignorant. Others may have seen porn, but maybe not more realistic descriptions of sexuality. I haven't read Maas, so I don't know how those books are in that regard, but here's a quote from another book ("The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas, which has been challenged for its sexual content, as well as for other reasons), which is a good example of the kind of thing 14-year olds could benefit from reading:

Spoiler:

Fooling around isn’t new for us, and when Chris slipped his hand in my shorts, I didn’t think anything of it. Then he got me going, and I really wasn’t thinking. At all. For real, my thought process went out the door. And right as I was at that moment, he stopped, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a condom. He raised his eyebrows at me, silently asking for an invitation to go all the way.

All I could think about was those girls I see walking around Garden Heights, babies propped on their hips. Condom or no condom, shit happens.

I went off on Chris. He knew I wasn’t ready for that, we already talked about it, and yet he had a condom? He said he wanted to be responsible, but if I said I’m not ready, I’m not ready.

I left his house pissed and horny, the absolute worst way to leave.

I've got a feeling you've never had kids, so you're probably unaware about what parents go through when raising them.

I have children who are now grown up. But I remember vividly balancing on the knife's edge between "My, how brave you are!" and "No! Stop! That's dangerous!" Giving children enough room to grow and enough support when they need it is hard. But I was never in doubt about getting them library cards (to the public library, not just the small one at the school) well before they were old enough to take the bus to the library themselves, and I've never tried to monitor what they chose to read.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Your opinion noted but I don't agree. I think parents do have the right to keep their school libraries free of this kind of material.

And there are parents on the other side of the fence who are OK with it. When the parents who don't want it win, we all lose.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcentros

What kids can do outside of the school is beside the point. You're right that this law, in its own way, promotes these books. I definitely wouldn't have heard of them without the law (and the post here). But apparently it was the only way to get them out of school libraries, even in a state like Utah. And it's not like Maas is an unknown writer, apparently she's sold some 12 million books. The real question is why didn't school librarians take these books out of their libraries without this law? And why were they there in the first place?

I've had high school teens, six of them, and I would definitely not have wanted them reading this crap.

Because the librarians are all for the freedom to read. It's a bad day for the students when books are banned because of some asinine people.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcentros

And your point is...?

That these books are extremely popular.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by rcentros

How the book is "classified" means nothing. It's its content that matters.

Of course the classification matters. Books are classified based on their content, and the fact that Maas's books aren't classified as erotica means that other people by no means agree with your assertion that her books are pornographic.

Originally Posted by rcentros

I'm not going to quibble over pornographic vs "bad taste" or "erotica."

Neither am I. I used the word "erotica", because that's what the pornography section of the Kobo store is called. 'A Court Of Thorns And Roses' does not appear in that section, thus demonstrating that Maas's books are in fact not pornographic, regardless of how much you dislike them.

Originally Posted by rcentros

When sexual acts are described in the detail that they were described in the book I scanned, whether it's smut, porno, erotica, "in bad taste" or however you want to describe it, it definitely is not something that should be available to a 14 year-old child in their school library.

That's your opinion. As a parent, you would have the right to prevent your minor children from reading it, but you don't have the right to use censorship to prevent other people's minor children from reading it.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The term "young adult" is meaningless. You are either an adult or not.

"Young adult" usually means an older "teenager." As such, in the eyes of the law, not an adult.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I agree wholeheartedly. Only problem is: we WEREN'T quibbling over 'degrees of porn'. I was disputing whether porn was being placed in Utah's school libraries at all. Your opinion based on the skimming of another novel gives me a high degree of certainty that nothing even approaching the average person's definition of 'porn' has been placed in any school library. What I'm hearing is an objection to books that acknowledge sexual encounters of any kind happening between characters in books being available to students of any age in state schools.

Keeping your own kids out of public schools seems like a much more reasonable approach to parenting than supporting bans on what other parents' children are allowed to read in public schools is.

I'm sorry, but what I read in the one Maas book that I scanned seemed a hell of a lot like porn to me — unless "real" porn involves animals or something. I don't want to get into details about exactly what you think constitutes porn, but I've got a really clear idea of what I didn't want my kids reading in school. This crap (smut, porn, explicit material, "instruction manual," whatever you want to call it) definitely falls into that category.

Remember, high school kids are as young as 14 (maybe 13) years old. Do you think they stop rating movies now?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Idaho's gonna do what Idaho's gonna do. Thankfully, there are 4 out-of-state libraries that allow Idaho teens to get free library cards online and without parental consent.

"Thankfully?" Because kids really, really need smut?

[John F]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

...


That's your opinion. As a parent, you would have the right to prevent your minor children from reading it, but you don't have the right to use censorship to prevent other people's minor children from reading it.

Are you referring to a Utah law?

Are the schools require by law to keep a list of books that are not allowed per student?

[DNSB]

I think they are suggesting that some books will require a parental permission slip to be on record before the student is allowed to check out certain books.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I've known plenty of parents who try being their kids friends rather than their parents. Plenty of parents outright ignore their duty as parents. If you are going to claim/expect it's your job to decide these issues then you had BETTER do the job but do it responsibly and realistically.

But what about parents who do watch over their kids and successfully keep their children from running around having sex, drinking and taking drugs? Should they be undermined by a school librarian who thinks smut for kids is a-okay?

For me the solution was to keep my kids out of public school. That seemed to work out pretty well for us, as we didn't have teachers trying to undermine us with their "new norms."

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcentros

"Young adult" usually means an older "teenager." As such, in the eyes of the law, not an adult.

That's why the term is useless. You are not a young adult wen you are not an adult.

And if we are going to call people who recently turn adults young adults then were is the term middle-age adults and old adults? We really do need to drop the term and be done with it as it's worthless and very much wrong.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Parents have the right to keep their children away from material they find objectionable. They do NOT have the right to keep other people's children away from that material. That's interfering in the parental rights of other people.

Okay, so tell me how this parent's right to keep their kids away from smut works when the school librarian stocks the school library with smut? What you're really saying is that the school librarian should have a veto over parental rights.

I don't agree with that. Again, this is one reason my kids didn't go to public school. Too many teachers and administrators who think they know better than the parents how kids should be brought up. But not every parent has that choice to keep their child out of public school... unfortunately.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I'm not going to quibble over pornographic vs "bad taste" or "erotica." When sexual acts are described in the detail that they were described in the book I scanned, whether it's smut, porno, erotica, "in bad taste" or however you want to describe it, it definitely is not something that should be available to a 14 year-old child in their school library.

And, since school librarians seem to think this kind of smut is perfectly acceptable for children, what works better? Trusting them to do the right thing or banning books that shouldn't have been there in the first place? I'm guessing parents already went to their school librarians and were stone walled on this subject. Which is probably why the law was passed.

Margaret Atwood's novel deals with online child pornography and gore videos. And even that in morally ambiguous way. It really has no place in school libraries.

I see reason in the bans, it's media outlets and certain individuals that tend to cry censorship without a thought, and are not capable of looking at the issue from the other side. Where would we be without restrains?