The problem is that the definition of "things that are inappropriate for kids" brought up by book-banners is almost always heavily inspired by religion. A book containing graphical violence and sex, like the Bible? Totally okay! A book containing casual day-to-day life, like mentioning in passing that little Johnny next door has two dads? Somehow completely inappropriate.
They never said that. They just pointed out the hypocrisy of the situation, where certain topics normally deemed extremely controversial by those very figures become totally fine if they're brought up along the lines of their ideology. The comment contains no judgements on what should be included or excluded from their point of view.
I've got to interject. Clearly religious texts are of a different nature than gay kids books and teen romance novels. There may be some milquetoast books targetted by the religious but many of them are legitimately in the category of erotica. I've never seen a religious scripture that fell into the category of erotica, besides perhaps the Kama Sutra lol.
>The comment contains no judgements on what should be included or excluded from their point of view.
Let's be real. The types of people who bother to bring up the supposed hypocrisy of it are very much in favor of keeping the erotica, and may very well be in favor of pushing out religious texts because of "the science" or some shit. I know some people have said that they had trouble finding a bible in their library on YouTube. Somehow I doubt it was merely a case of them all being checked out either. If you ever catch a video of the people at the top of the American Library Association talking about these "book ban" issues it will all start to make sense.
> There may be some milquetoast books targeted by the religious but many of them are legitimately in the category of erotica
How much erotica are you seeing in the list linked above? Maybe a few could be kind of misconstrued for it, if someone was interpreting them with active hostility, but the far more obvious theme that ties them together is dealing with "heavy" themes in general - mental illness, discrimination, abuse, prostitution, suicide. Especially books that are overt in their themes and/or make the "wrong" conclusions in the eyes of the censors. You just set the rules for the argument by just filing all of that away as erotica, while most of it is anything but.
> I've never seen a religious scripture that fell into the category of erotica
That's because the hypocrisy that people argue about tends to concern things way worse than just some plain erotica. With their millennia-old standards for morality, religious texts from most religions often feature and endorse horrific acts and social standards that would without a doubt be instantly censored in schools much like the books above, if they weren't religious.
> Let's be real. The types of people who bother to bring up the supposed hypocrisy of it are very much in favor of keeping the erotica, and may very well be in favor of pushing out religious texts because of "the science" or some shit
"Being real" in this case seems to be a way of making a leading argument. I am on the side of those "types of people", and I know many more like that. The vast majority of people hold the stance of minimum book censorship, if at all possible. While I disagree with many religious books on most levels, censoring them would be equally misguided and pointless. At this point, they're important historical texts that frame a lot of how our society works. Anyone who wishes to access them should be able to do so, as should be the case with most other information.
> I know some people have said that they had trouble finding a bible in their library on YouTube
I don't know if YouTube content, especially from people who no doubt were looking for this specific conclusion, is enough to convince me that the most printed document in existence is suddenly impossible to find nowadays.
> Somehow I doubt it was merely a case of them all being checked out either
This is the crux of your argument, and you leave it up to subjective doubting? How many libraries have banned religious books as policy, rather than just having them vaguely be unavailable at some specific point in time?
Every day, hundreds if not thousands of these books are given away for free, on a range of anything from charity to forcing them down people's throats. The argument for this extreme of a level of anti-Christian persecution and censorship in the most religious country in the West isn't looking very good.
>How much erotica are you seeing in the list linked above?
I honestly don't have time to go do a bunch of research on 52 random books I'm definitely not going to read. All I can tell you for sure is that many of these books are inappropriate for children, and I'd object to any book with sex scenes being in any public school library. I have seen people give damning reviews, including quotes and photos of graphic content, from books they wanted removed from school libraries, and I was inclined to agree with them. I'm not even a Christian, but I want to pay for that even less than copies of random religious texts.
>I am on the side of those "types of people", and I know many more like that.
I am not going to give a blanket endorsement to LGBT in this way. I believe in live and let live, more or less, but I believe many of these people are more evangelical than any religion at this point. Anyway, on the subject of injecting their "representation" into everything, even content for prepubescent children, I am very opposed.
>The vast majority of people hold the stance of minimum book censorship, if at all possible.
I hope this is true, but I am not so sure these days.
>Anyone who wishes to access them should be able to do so, as should be the case with most other information.
At risk of going off on a tangent: As much as I love libraries and books, I don't believe in "information wants to be free" type rhetoric. People need to be paid for their work one way or another.
>I don't know if YouTube content, especially from people who no doubt were looking for this specific conclusion, is enough to convince me that the most printed document in existence is suddenly impossible to find nowadays.
I never said that it was hard to find in general. I said that some people reported that their libraries did not have these bog standard books.
>How many libraries have banned religious books as policy, rather than just having them vaguely be unavailable at some specific point in time?
As I said, I only heard some anecdotes. I believe this is still probably a rare occurrence but I can't prove one way or another. I mention it mainly so people can look out for it, not to prove anything.
>Every day, hundreds if not thousands of these books are given away for free, on a range of anything from charity to forcing them down people's throats.
Nobody is actually forced to own and read a bible, unless they are trying to do it to fit in with the religious folk. I consider that voluntary.
>The argument for this extreme of a level of anti-Christian persecution and censorship in the most religious country in the West isn't looking very good.
I personally witnessed some normal inoffensive Christian content censored on Facebook a couple of years ago as if it was gore. There is definitely a sizeable group of people which openly detests Christians and hopes to see the religion die, even though most Christians are very nice people and the religion is very important for Western values. Meanwhile, we have Islamic apologists hoping to excuse terrorism and continue importing millions of highly fertile, culturally incompatible invaders. The same people talking shit about Christian views on abortion will stick up for Muslims who hate all of us and want to take over, and LGBT, which the Muslims especially hate. Sometimes the absurdity of it all makes me suspect we live in a simulation.
You are literally spouting right wing book banner talking points.
"Suitable for children." Uh huh. According to your pastor.