Not that you said otherwise, but... I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days. There shouldn't be any shame in being part of the same coalition on one issue with people who are reprehensible on other issues. Agreeing with the Florida government about some point of social media regulation doesn't imply I agree with them about anything else.
This immediately puts massive scale social media in a very unique place. By contrast, public school libraries are anything but a monopoly. If they don't offer a book you want, there are countless other ways to get it that are no less convenient, to say nothing of the digital age and searching for 'book i want pdf.' This generalizes to other scenarios as well. At one time it was believed that private businesses out be able to restrict employment or service based on things like the race or religion of their customers/applicants. But as this started to become a more substantial issue in terms of scale, society decided otherwise.
But that's an argument against Facebook in particular, not against social media as a category.
Fundamentally, the problem is that we have allowed the modern "public square" to be in these spaces entirely owned by private companies.
What we really need is an open protocol for a federated social network that works very much like Facebook (so, not something like Mastodon, which is designed to work like Twitter, for instance—though it would probably be worthwhile to do the same with it) and have the government operate some public "reference servers" that anyone can join, while others can also operate servers that can federate with them. That way, you're still able to connect to people even if they're not on your particular server...provided they don't belong to a server that's been blocked from federation due to hate speech or something.
Everyone says they want free speech. But deep down they don't. Some don't want gay marriage written in books, and some don't want anti-vaxxers to post misinformation. Those are 2 sides of the same coin.
Freedom of speech is a critical cornerstone of liberal government. The fact that so many sides want to reduce this right is what is scary.
We have much less freedom than we think, and the freedom we do have we pay a very high price for. I often use the phrase "What price freedom?" in conversations, and unfortunately most don't understand what it means.
1. Your freedom can cause problems to me an to society as a whole
2. We pay much in blood and treasure to maintain our freedom
3. There are unintended consequences and knock-on effects to most all rules regarding freedom.
Or to generalize: "Freedom isn't free"
The same paternalism has justified poisoning one's own people in a "war" against alcohol, dictated who was allowed to have sex with whom in privacy of their own home, and resulted in human experimentation for the supposed betterment of society.
There is a way to get there: it's changing our voting method.
Single-choice, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all voting is effectively guaranteed to result in a two-party system.
There are a number of alternative voting systems, and all of them that I've heard of have flaws, but Ranked Choice Voting is one of the better ones, and seems to be gaining some traction recently in a few places.
If you really want to break our political duopoly, push for Ranked Choice Voting at every level you have influence over. It'll be easier the more local you get, and the more jurisdictions adopt it, the easier it will be to get others to do the same.
We desperately need elections where more than just the two dominant parties can compete without a spoiler effect.
This is happening, just FYI, up in Canada right now - there are four parties worth talking about - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Quebecois - the last two are essentially just regional parties which do occasionally win surprise seats but mostly just exist within a localized area. That is enough, in our parliamentary system to force cooperation at a federal level - but without serious action I can't see any ending in sight other than slowly devolving to American politics.
Uhm... you do realize there are plenty of us on the left who adopt exactly those positions?
The reality is, the parties are systemically more interested in self preservation than governing. So neither seem to support serious reform.
Imagine creating a forum and now the Florida government dictates what you can and can't moderate. Disastrous.
The other issue is a bit more strategic. Policy victory brings electoral victory, and you don't get to pick and choose which other policies come along for the ride when someone wins. Nobody agrees with a politician or political party on every issues of course, but it's probably not a good idea to ignore the rest of their views entirely just because they happen to back at least one policy you agree with. At the risk of invoking Goodwin, if you weren't a fan of that Hitler fellow but supported him anyways because you liked road construction, you might have regretted your choice.
Modernity has brought us closer to subjectivism than ever.
I think the fact that you deliberately expressed what's been a complicated, and almost exclusively school-board driven, phenomenon in such a simple way shows you either haven't read much outside the headlines, or are just hoping to pull people to your side while discouraging them to do any actual research.
Either way, your comment comes across as just as transparently politically motivated as the actions you're criticizing. If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that, it's not necessary to beat around the bush.
No, I want him voted out because of specific actions and I also want every politician inclined to take those specific actions voted out. I don't hate him because he's a Republican, I don't hate him because he's a straight white Christian man, I don't hate him because he's from Florida, I don't hate him. I hate the actions that he's performed (funny thing about that MLK quote; some people just cannot tolerate being judged by the contents of their character).
To pretend that the people behind these "school-board driven" actions are not motivated by, encouraged by, and supportive of DeSantis is completely ludicrous. Anti-LGBT activists are clamoring to join school boards around the country, looking to effect the same policies.
For example?
https://www.wlrn.org/education/2022-06-09/palm-beach-county-...
I don't see how this is any different.
> District staff sent out a list of questions teachers have to answer, like — does a book encourage students to believe that people are racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously? [...] If teachers answer “yes” or “unsure” to any of the questions in the district’s guidance, the book is to be removed from the classroom for further review.
Gee, would ya look at that
Sorry, that one's actually a school board in California, but the same idea applies here, right? The state is to blame?
Relatedly, the vague "don't say gay" law has a significant impact on LGBTQ teachers right to free expression -- straight teachers are totally free to talk about their spouses, for example, but gay teachers are not. Quite reminiscent of the "don't ask don't tell" policy.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/a-viral-list-of-b...
[2] https://floridapolitics.com/archives/557111-florida-second-o...
The idea that a teacher wants to talk to their students about their personal lives is utterly foreign to me.
Maybe it's just a sign of times changing?
Edit: this thought came to me in the context of a quote I saw from a teacher upset he couldn't talk about going surfing with his husband.
There was a wide enough income gap in our school that teachers talking about vacations was frowned upon, since you never really knew which kids didn't actually ever get to go on vacations, etc.
My school also had two married teachers who shared a surname. We all knew they were married.
There were also a few teachers (band, orchestra, sports coaches) whose spouses would volunteer at events and travel with them.
Also quite a few teachers wore religious symbols -- cross on a necklace kind of thing. And quite a few of my teachers had pictures of their families on their desks. They didn't make a big deal about it, but evidence was in plain sight.
Now, I was in the high school in the 90s. I'm not sure when you think this changed.
That strikes me as odd. I recall this happening many times. Heck, there were even several pairs of teachers who met at school and got married. One teacher proposed to another teacher during a town parade where many students and teachers were present. It's not like teachers dwelled on personal details in class. It's just that it would be impossible to miss.
Even now, we know very little about the romantic lives of our son's teachers – and I expect our son knows even less than we do. Even when we do know things, it is through gossip among parents, or socialising with teachers – not from teachers telling the children about it in class.
Many teachers also have pictures of their family on their desks, as one might in their office at any other job.
Especially in lower grades, teachers are not robots that exclusively teach content from bell to bell each day.
This is pretty different from coming to school and telling 7yos about the sex party you went to this weekend and which gender you were identifying as when you went. This is the reality some parents are trying to prevent when they say some American teachers are taking their freedom to share their personal lives a bit far.
Let's be real, obviously there's nothing wrong with having a teacher who's LGBT. What people have a problem with are the folks who derive their entire identity out of that, and then greatly encourage the kids they teach to do the same. It's not dissimilar from a teacher being a veteran and insisting on sharing that part of their life with their students, to a point where parents find it crosses boundaries. We actually had a teacher at my high school who used to be a sniper in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was eventually told by the principal no more Afghan war stories, as it was making the students feel uncomfortable hearing that sort of thing from teacher.
The very obvious comparison here is a teacher coming to school and telling their kids, in detail, about their sex life or multiple gender transition surgeries. While they're topics which I'm comfortable with, I can't speak for every parent and I think it's wrong for the state to say "these topics MUST be socially acceptable to you, bigot."
Just teach the class! You don't need to get them excited about queer culture or gun culture or joining the military. Everyone would be better so much better off if teachers could just largely leave their personal lives at home and stick to the syllabus.
When has this ever happened?
> What people have a problem with are the folks who derive their entire identity out of that, and then greatly encourage the kids they teach to do the same.
When has this ever happened?
> The very obvious comparison here is a teacher coming to school and telling their kids, in detail, about their sex life or multiple gender transition surgeries
When has this ever happened?
Straight people also have sex parties. Why are we legislating against LGBT people specifically?
Were you expecting a news article? I'm not the 7yo in the classroom, these are just things I've heard from other parents while I've been spending time in FL. People are earnestly scared about what their kids are being taught in school and I think it's pretty cruel to abuse them instead of taking their concerns seriously.
Any of the examples I used are pretty obviously anecdotal, I'm surprised that wasn't clear to you. Not everything which has ever happened in this world has a Wikipedia article or video to link back to, some things just happen and then people tell others in their community, they don't necessarily run to write a blog post.
If you aren't living in FL right now I'm not sure how nuanced your perspective is going to be on the topic, but your opinions are always welcome, of course.
Yes, actually.
I can scaremonger straight people equally well, but choose not to. LGBT people are just the latest casualty in the nonsense "culture war."
For example, this: https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-777442211945
People saw cat litter on campus, which is commonly used to clean vomit off of floors at school, and fabricated this outrage. Anecdotes are not enough to villainize an entire group of people.
I live in TX, the book-banning capital of the US, so not too far off from FL.
I shared an anecdote from a woman who had absolutely reason to lie, this wasn't a conversation on the internet, this was a handful of us chatting together at the dog park. Did you seriously expect me to do what you just did and smugly tell her that without a source she's just speaking lies? It's a fairly juvenile and reddit move, but again, we're seeing it right now.
If the only way you allow your priors to be updated is by reading news articles, I think you're going to find yourself fairly behind in cultural trends.
Finally, if news articles are truly the only way you can read, please feel free to read about what's happening near my hometown. [1] This should align well with your current assumption that it's not possible for LGBT people to do any wrong, and that any accusation of such is just right-wing 'nonsense'.
[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/9151189/school-board-aware-protes...
That sounds extremely specific. Do you have a source? Because I tend to agree, if somebody told my kid shit like that I'd also want them fired too.
If someone at the dog park told you a story, is your response to ask for a source and dismiss her when she tells you that one very obviously doesn't exist? Seems like a funny way to interact with people.
With cases like that, personal details end up discussed inadvertently because it's impossible to avoid. So-and-so's wife might be a teacher in the same district, or they might show up at school during late work hours and so forth. Same if they're running a club or some extracurricular activity.
I don't think that's especially weird at all.
So they want to shut down any and all speech in that regard but force companies to publish speech that may not fall within their terms of service.
This is small government?
The idea that the law restricts a male teacher from having a family photo or talking to students about what he did with his husband over vacation is completely false. That would be as illegal as preventing a teacher from praying with students in their off-time (after football games), which recently got re-affirmed by the supreme court. It only binds teachers' speech when they are operating in their official capacity as agents of the state.
While you might not agree with this particular restriction, agents of the state generally do not have free speech when they are acting in their official capacity. Teachers, DMV employees, and police officers all have lots of restrictions on their official speech. The ability of the people to restrict the speech of their agents is very important for maintaining a democracy. It keeps religion out of school curricula and it is what makes cops read you your rights when you are arrested.
Also the don't say gay bill is fake news because it doesn't say that.
Germany making pro Nazi rhetoric illegal no matter where is a ban (one I can agree with)
Florida making sure their Public money is not spent on this is not a ban. You can still own and publish these books in Florida. Or have them in a privately owned library or at a private university or school.
Let's stop hyperbolizing. It is actually totally reasonable to censor books in libraries targeted towards children. Not doing so is unreasonable.
That is a ban.
And lending a book is a positive action. If you gave the library your playboy collection should they keep it? Why or why not? Clearly, it is important to have standards for school libraries. There are other books that elementary school libraries should not contain. For example, mein kampf should be maybe available to higher-grade high-schoolers. Certainly not children. My school library growing up would not lend books marked for older grades to younger ones without permission. This is the same thing.
There was so much misframing and misinformation about the bill, continuing to use the Democrat and media made up name and language for the bill shows your slant. Just because many media organizations kept calling it, that doesn't mean anybody here should.
It does not ban nor prevent the use of the word "gay." Asserting so is pushing information that is false, hence misinformation.
Just like the reframing of "woke" and "critical race theory" are misinformation - right? Right?
I have accepted that reframing language is now a legitimate political tool, and from my PoV, the right has been doing it a lot, such as labelling any milquetoast protest by groups nominally on the left an "insurrection" after 1/6. I believe it's a deliberate attack akin to semantic satiation to render a word meaningless, the conservative operative bluntly admitted (on Twitter!) to successful rebranding "woke". That egg will not be unscrambled.
You'll likely make a terrible politician[1] then, because that is a terrible approach in game theory when facing an opponent who defects consistently.
I was being descriptive - not prescriptive. This is now our political reality regardless of how we feel about it: politicians hold entire hearings to get 10-second sound-bites, and political operatives focus-group effective language which tends to be pithy and evocative (which gets called "misinformation" on HN when it's the other side doing it). Talking heads get coached on which phrases to use and the meme (in the original sense) gets spread and repeated by viewers/listeners. Asking people to stop using a specific term which was selected for being catchy is a losing battle - Pandora's box was opened on what are effectively PsyOps by political parties.
1. Jimmy Carter was a terrible politician in the same vein - he gave an honest answer when asked by the press if he had lusted after any woman who's not his wife. He is a good man, but that's not good politics.
The bans in the article you cited are done at the school district level, not the state level. Holding the executive branch of government of Florida responsible for those decisions would be similar to blaming the Biden administration for the actions of Florida's executive branch.
It also appears that the link you cited confuses curriculum selection with book banning. There's a range of what can be called a book ban. For example, when the novel Ulysses was banned, people who sold the book were arrested and imports of the book into the US were seized. That's definitely a book ban. Nothing of the sort is happening in Florida.
There are also cases where local school districts remove titles from school libraries, but those books can still be borrowed from public libraries, sold in book stores, or purchased or read online. If that's a book ban, it's not a book ban in the same sense that the ban of Ulysses was a book ban.
Then there are decisions by local school districts about what material should be used to teach classes in the schools in that district. For me, exercising control over school curriculum is not a book ban and is in no way similar to seizing copies of books and arresting people for selling those books.
1. Are complained about by a parent and
2. Are obscene
Note that 2 is open to interpretation, so this justification has been used to ban classics like beloved and the kite runner, as school librarians can face criminal penalties if they don't do what (a single) parent asks.
The same is true for federal law.
From https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/obscenity:
"Federal law strictly prohibits the distribution of obscene matter to minors. Any transfer or attempt to transfer such material to a minor under the age of 16, including over the Internet, is punishable under federal law."
Is that book banning?
Do you think federal laws against providing pornography to minors should be overturned?
For example, the graphic novel "Gender Queer" has been banned under the broad brush of "pornography" in Florida, when it's educational and certainly not intended to grant anyone sexual satisfaction. The key thing is that cis- and hetero-normative "obscenity", like an anatomy textbook is likely acceptable, but the same images in a book that described queerness would not be.
Specifically, to use your source, none of the books banned in Florida would pass the Miller test as all of them taken as a whole, posses "serious artistic, political, or scientific value", and few are "prurient" in nature, nor do they describe sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" way.
To use the examples from above, Kite Runner and Beloved are both critically acclaimed, award-winning novels, to claim they have no artistic merit is...simply wrong.
If it's heteronormative to merely show anatomy (and presumably describe mating) then I don't understand why that's worth calling out. It's no insult to anyone to say that male-female relationships are the most common and the only ones that produce children. We don't need to represent everything as equally likely to say that it's okay.
As for cis, I struggle to see how anatomy would intersect with gender-identity at all. Bodies are male or female, and may be intersex.
> graphic novel "Gender Queer" has been banned under the broad brush of "pornography" in Florida, when it's educational
This feels like a problem of having to find a category. If there was an 'unapproved medical advice' category it would be more descriptive.
As for its educational content, it recommends - not merely discusses but actively recommends - drugs and breast-binding for something that many (most?) parents do not think is a medical condition.
> nor do they describe sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" way.
In looking it up and reading it I discovered that the author said "It's been two years since it was published, why are they mad about it now?" and the answer to that is schools. The book wasn't being protested when it was available for sale, and in public libraries, only when it was placed in school libraries.
I think the 'patently offensive' element here is specifically that it's being placed in schools even though many parents don't want it and even explicitly over their objections.