All of these books are freely available if you would like to spend your own money on them, as opposed to public funds.
Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution.
The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/florida-school-board-vote...
You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"?
Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"?
I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
Let me try to break the deadlock: epistasis is getting at the fact that you can't call yourself an "absolutist" on free speech because your position is not absolute, but qualified -- all speech is free except speech you find problematic, which shall be regulated. That's pretty much everyone's definition of free speech, not an absolutist take.
An absolutist would say there should be absolutely no content-based restrictions on what is in the library regardless of the ages of the patrons. Hustler, Anarchist Cookbook, whatever. They might justify that by saying "free speech is so important we can't place any limits on it. If you as a parent find the idea your child might access speech you find distasteful, it's up to you to prevent your child from seeing it, not the library or the government".
> without fear of repercussion
Let's say you write a book about being a kid and finding it uncomfortable to grow up who you are. You're free to write it, free to talk about it, free to to sell it. But then the government adds your book to a list of books they deem "pedophilic and a danger to children."
Do you think you would be free from repercussions from the government publishing your book on the harmful to kids list? Can free speech thrive in such an environment?
What is "absolute" about this?
Do you want your own speech to be absolutely free of repercussions to you, be they government or not? Is that it? I really have trouble trying to put some sort of consistent framework in this, unless it's dividing the world into two classes of people: those who will not experience repercussions and those who will experience repercussions for their speech.
A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library.
For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration.
I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties.
EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess:
>A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment.
>Judge Mendoza disagreed.
>“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
It seems more and more that the elephant in the room here is that schools are part of government, but they overwhelmingly lean the opposite side of the administration and they want to exercise their speech through their positions, but the government doesn't want to allow that.
Private individuals would of course enjoy first amendment protections on speech, but if you are government you don't get your speech restricted by government, that's just government. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
Come on, now.