librarypunk - 088 - It’s bad news roundup, pardner

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

This week we talk male beauty tips, why you need a weed card in New Hampshire, and the implosion of libraries as we know them. News time! Media mentioned https://www.newstalk.com/news/library-staff-offered-supports-as-anti-lgbtq-protesters-target-childrens-books-1452290  https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2023/04/03/libraries-at-centre-of-culture-wars-as-protesters-try-to-remove-lgtbq-books-for-young-people/ https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/texas-banned-books-ruling-judge/story?id=98303996  https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/31/texas-school-library-books/ https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/02/20/safety-measure-or-book-banning-tool-k-12-obscene-materials-bill-sparks-heated-debate/  Non-news media mentioned FLO Controlled Digital Lending Meeting: https://libraries.flo.org/ld.php?content_id=71305971 https://www.dukeupress.edu/no-future Srsly Wrong episodes about child rights 266 – Think of the Children! 265- Ageism, Misopedy, Adult Supremacy, Child Liberation, Childism, Adultism, Child Rights, Etc. 263 – A Conversation with Pearson Bolt about Child Liberation 262 – Society Lets Children Down

For Christmas, my best friend made me a shirt that said librarian at the vampire mansion. And a separate friend made me a shirt that says Pull Boy at the Vampire Mansion. So I'm both the pool boy and the librarian at the vampire mansion. I was just laughing because you and Jay got your home states and I got Ireland. That's because me and Justin live in stupid states. Well, I was, I grabbed the Ireland one first because I was like, oh, this is interesting. And I bet we don't have a whole lot of Irish listeners. So I thought, oh, let's throw that in there.

And then the Texas ones, I've been meaning to read anyway. So I was like, okay, let me grab a couple of those. Because the court casing when I talk about, that was just taking notes for. I should have read the whole thing. There's a reporting on it was bad. So it's kind of my takeaway for this episode is we can't really trust the reporting on these things. we've really got to go read the cases ourselves because the reporters not only don't understand the legal issues at hand, they also don't understand the libraries.

And so it leads to really misleading. And they miss like the funniest parts of the story too. Yeah. And then I don't know. I just searched like libraries in New Hampshire. And it's like, oh, yeah, they're in a little bit of an earlier stage, it seems, of the conflation between any kind of sexuality and pornography. They're still like, no, it's porn is defined in the way we know how to define porn.

Like, curiant interests is the main point. So they're still focusing on that. Yeah. But I didn't read as in depth as you did. Yeah. Worth time in like two months that I've woken up and I've been able to take a shower because my hot water wasn't working. So I've been just like a grimy rat boy like going to work with my hair.

And I look the most mask I've ever looked in my life. And it makes me so mad that when I'm like a gross little gremlin that I look really hot, I'm like, fuck. Is this just what masculinity is as being a gross little pervert? No, this is. It's like because growing up as a citizen. This dude, cis woman will always be like, why is your skin so nice? You don't do anything for it.

Why is your hair so nice? You don't do anything for it. I do that is the secret. Is to not do anything for it. I only wash my hair twice a week anyway. Although I do get a face wash. You get like some seraphate. Yeah.

I wash my hair twice a week. I'm so jealous of you who don't have skin problems if you don't wash your face. I just don't do anything about it. I'm on acutane and I started that like a. are like right around the time I started tea so I did not get tea acne. Ooh. That's the secret kids put up with doing a pregnancy test every month and get on some fucking acutane.

I can recommend you the chapstick to get so that your lips don't fall off and you'll be fine from there. It'll be beautiful forever. Trust me, I'm a fucking vampire now. No one knows how old I am. I'm beautiful and perfect like the sun. Yeah. Is hair acne more common?

Among men, because I feel like a lot of dudes get hair acne. And like, it's really bad. In my beard sometimes, like, if I haven't shaved in a while, I'll start to. It looks like an infection kind of acne. You get it from cutting your hair too short too often. I, with my little Oscar Wild hair, do not have that problem. Yeah. Basically, the need to treat it is like acne treatments.

So you've got to flick acne treatments in your hair. Yeah. I mean, I've always had, like, really coarse, dense hair. that is prone to ingrones and stuff. So everywhere on my body. So that's nothing new. This is now a skin care. This is now we're beauty gurus now.

You did see that thread about the guy who is like, I want to look, how do I dress sluttier? I want to look like, what was it? He said, a stripper paying his way through grad school. And then this fashion guy is like, let me take a shot at it. And then he like posted stuff. So I bought a couple shirts. Send me them.

I sent you the... This is the five-inch shorts. The five-inch shorts. Yeah, he mentions five-inch shorts. And, yeah, five-inch shorts go down to almost my knees. They're supposed to stop like mid-thigh. I have very short legs. I've got to get short.

I've got to get them shorter. I've got to get... Library punk is going into its slut era. It's going to be hot girl summer in Library Punk. Yeah. Just buy some Goodwell jeans and give yourself cutoffs. Do a bunch of squats so your ass gets fat, you know. Black Lagoon cut off.

All right, let's go. I'm Justin. I'm Skalkalcom library, and my pronouns are he-him. Hi, I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. And I'm Jay. I'm a music library director, and my pronouns are he-him. And Arthur's here. Say hi, Arthur. Arthur says hi. You drink a PBR too, Justin? No, I got a diet Dr. B. Oh, I've got a 24-ounce.

the PBR baby. I have horschata from my local taco truck. And I had some apple pie for dessert. I don't normally do dessert, but I've been showing a librarian friend of mine who we are going to get on the show eventually, Twin Peaks. And we were having fun with it. And she brought over some pie and then coffee for herself while we watch Twin Peaks. So it's fun. So we're doing a news roundup, current events.

Do I have a... It's a little more dramatic, but we're just going to look through the news and what's all going on because there's a lot of it to choose from. And it's an easy episode to build. We don't need to guess for it. Also an incredibly depressing episode to build, but... Yeah. So, let's see. We've got a J-up date.

That is one gay-ass skeleton. Hey, girl. Hey! How does that sound like me? It is really unnerving when you hear someone who sounds like you. That's so weird because that's not me, but it sounds like me. Anywho, last episode, when we talked about the internet archive bullshit, I mentioned that I was going to go to the Fenway Library Organization's

controlled digital lending community of interest meetings since my library is part of said organization. And that was today sort of some updates from that, at least around like, And I've linked the minutes, which are publicly available in the notes. That also mentions, like, what libraries were there. Again, this is all public information. I'm not like doxing anything. And sort of the reactions and updates about the case and the implications for doing CDL within academic libraries, at least, because that's who I think is primarily in the Fenway Library Organization.

Was we pointed out that, like, Section 108 wasn't mentioned in the case and in the white paper, and so we can use Section 101 to wait to our advantage, right? We pointed out that the scope of the audience for what we would be doing a CDL, even as a consortium, is different than what Internet Archive and Open Libraries was doing, since ours would be limited by either, like, you know, taxpayer patrons or, like, tuition or staff, you know, employee patrons, right? It's like a different, like, there's a limited audience for CDL. But also, like, terminology is the term CDL kind of,

of too poisoned now because it's so associated with internet archive. And do we just pivot to kind of doing like, quote, digital reserves and shit like that, you know, being intentional with our language. And then making sure that people, when they are doing any sort of CDL, that they have a policy. Like, don't just do it. Like, have a policy that says what the scope is and explains what exactly is being done and why is it being done. We're sort of some key takeaways. And then some questions that came up were like just pursuing quote CDL limit or scope. Do we have to limit how far we can make these materials accessible this way?

And then what about like across libraries? Like what about like within consortiums or like an interlibrary loan style? Because like think about with interlibrary loan, we already scan or. slash send PDFs of entire journal articles and book chapters to people without DRM and they can just keep them forever, right? And so like this is something that we already kind of do to some extent. And then who is going to be challenged next? Like are we just quote like, do we just not have to be worried we're small, you know, small fish? Like it doesn't matter. Who then do we think is going to be challenged next? Do we think they'll go after like a big library or maybe something like the Boston

library consortium who's been very open about doing CDL and stuff. And I know Kyle's been working with the BLC a lot with their CDL. And in the minutes are some links, including at the end a presentation that was done at Code for Lib around CDL. And then just sort of talking about this one software called reshare that's been sort of floating around as maybe like something that can be used to do, quote, CDL like within a library and also a,

across institutions. But the main thing was just sort of like making sure you have a policy and being very intentional about that and then also being intentional with language. Like do we scrap the terminology CDL and do quote digital reserves wink so that it doesn't attract attention? The thing was we're going to keep doing it. It didn't scare us off was the thing. And I think is the important thing was that this group of librarians from different academic libraries in Boston of all different scopes and sizes, even those of us who weren't even doing it yet, agreed that this wasn't any reason to not pursue doing it. We just have to be intentional about what we're doing and make sure we have written up policies that explain what we're doing

and how it's different than what the Internet Archive was doing. Right. So I think that's hopeful and that it wasn't, it didn't scare us off. And not just me, like everyone else in this meeting was like, yeah, we're still doing it. We think it's fine. We agree that what we're doing is different and maybe just call things digital reserves and like no one's going to give a shit. Protection through obscurity. Yeah, basically. It's a slightly different term for the same thing.

And like what we said last week, like they're not going to sue libraries. They're going to go after, you know, and they've already gone after Hottie Trust, right? You know, they're going to sue these companies or maybe a big library system. But again, I doubt it. So I just, I know a lot of people have been worried that like, this would scare us all off from doing it. And I just, I thought it was a good sign that even in the immediate wake,

we were like, nah, this, this doesn't really pertain to anything we as, like, academic libraries at least are doing. It'll definitely scare off some people. You just won't hear from them.

It'll be like, a small university with like a librarian who wanted to do CDL. And then their director will be like, didn't they lose that case? And then, you know, they might not have a good community. So I actually had my meeting with all of the Skullcom people in my system.

And we talked about it. Or actually, they brought it up. I didn't bring it up. And the 108 thing did come up, but one of librarians were skeptical that it would actually help. And this is the person who maintains the big copyright crash course. So I was like, oh, I don't know. But I mean, yeah, I still want to talk to a lawyer about like, why isn't 108 happening. But that's a different episode.

But yeah, I think that's a good update considering we're about to be a fucking bummer with the rest of this episode. Yeah. So first up, Ireland. I may be Irish, but I'm not stupid. Stadie's got this. Yeah. Okay. So from the articles I read, the thing that kind of slapped me across the face was one library staff member who said, one library staff member said,

it's like I went to bed in Dublin and woke up in Florida. which was just like, ouch and also like, I'm sorry. But from what I was reading, it sounds like the same bullshit that right-wingers are polling here where they've got

Mom for Liberty groups, actually, let me find the name of these groups who are going into public libraries, specifically this is public libraries, and reporting books as violating the Children First Act, which I'll get, into this because I ended up reading a whole bunch about it.

Groups by the name of the Irish Education Alliance, Parents Rights Alliance, and Lawyers for Justice claim these books and others violate child protection legislation. They advised followers to enter public libraries, ask librarians to show them LGBTQ plus books in the age 12 to 17 section and take photos of relevant books with inappropriate reading materials which violate the Children First Act. So, Lee Edelman has entered the chat.

Well, and the thing that gets me about this, though, is like, from my reading, it sounds like Irish public libraries kind of fall under the federal government. They have the local government management agency, which says it manages the public libraries, seem to have a policy and seem to have a longstanding policy that people under 18 are, like, restrained to particular categories of books. hence the aged 12 to 17 section and have to get parental consent to read beyond those categories. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. So, like, it's the kind of thing that people in the U.S. are, like, trying to get in place. So it's already there and they're not satisfied with it. So, like, if any of those respectability politics, people out there think that actually

acquisitioning or, you know, capitulating to some of these demands. will actually like satisfy them you is it's not it's not going to no the the point is they slowly tear it all down bit by bit you give them an inch and then they ask for another and another and another but they it's over time so you don't notice that that's what's happening until it's already yeah well and the one article that I was reading it'll be linked in the notes actually talked about how this the child membership with the signed consent from a parent to read outside of certain categories has apparently prompted this quiet among staff in some libraries who argue that the move is restricting young people's choice of books and is a response to recent protests by

thought police campaigners. So the local government management agency says that this has always been the case and their new library management system now has functionality to reaffirm consent in line with age categories. So they say this has been in place for a long time. librarians are saying, saying this is capitulation to the stupid right wing groups and the right ring groups are, you know, being themselves. So I think it's interesting because it's not just that these right ring groups are throwing a hissy fit, but at the same time, it sounds like they used, they upgraded their IT system. It further restricts, yeah, further restricts this sort of thing that I guess that libraries probably weren't actually following, because at least one staff member

in this article says that they're not going to follow that category restriction. So it sounds like they haven't, and it sounds like it's a technological stopgap to prevent people from being able to, like, skip over, like the parental categories. But one thing, if a child signs up for a library card who is under 18, but over 12, they still get placed under the under 12 category without parental consent. Oh, that's so stupid. So if a 15-year-old comes in and gets a library card, without parental consent, they can only check out books in the under 12 category. Like I say it's like after school, but their parents work late or something, and that's the only time they get to come to the library just because maybe their parents,

like, just don't want and have the time to be there at the same time as them. Yeah. And like, it didn't say how, like, it's like assigned parental consent, so it sounds like they can probably get like a permission slip. But at the same time, it's like one staff member says, imagine the indignity of being a teenager having to choose books from the child section. It's like you don't even get, you don't even get to pick out what's known to be in your age and maturity range. Yeah.

Which is like so stupid. So it sounds like there are some weird, weird restrictions to the Irish public library system already. And then there's these right wingers come in who want even more restrictions done on it. I mean, that feels like a trend in general lately of like, if you are under 18, you're a child. Yeah. Like, we will not recognize that there are different maturity levels. under the age of 18. You're a child.

And when you turn 18, you magically turn into adult, except not anymore. Now, if you have teen in front of your age, your child, you know, like, yeah, it's like this like, and just making it, the infantilizing everything. And then so you can't make your own decisions if you're infantilized. Yeah, it's like you're not, you're not allowed to develop the maturity you're supposedly need to have by the time you're 18. So when you're 18 and you're trying to develop this matured. that you've been denied suddenly. It's like, oh, well, look at all these 18-year-olds. They're not

mature enough to handle this stuff. I was like, well, why the fuck was that? Yeah, that's the point. But the thing that I kind of dove into with these articles was this, this children first act, because from just like trying to find just a general like overview of it, it has very little to do with the actual situation. The child first act is about mandatory reporting and the process is the government takes when it comes to reported child abuse. So it defines the different kind of child abuse. It has like a whole big guide for like social workers for the government and like what they do and like flow charts on like how they assess this kind of stuff. And there's one tiny little section that basically says if you are in an

organization that serves like serves children in any of these ways, you need to have a child safeguarding statement and you need to have done a risk assessment of how your services could bring harm to a child. And then from that, you need to have a child safeguarding statement and you need to know like what risks your service could possibly like have in regards to harming a child and have basically a policy to address that. So unless, you know, Irish libraries, public libraries have their thumb up their ass. They should already have a policy that they could turn around and tell these right wing groups, like, no. Like when it comes to the child first act, children first act, we've already covered all of our bases. I can't imagine that they wouldn't because they're overseen by a government, like a government organization. So it's just one of those like groomers. Again, groomers use sexually explicit content to groom children for abuse. Therefore, these books that are, you know, know about sexuality and gender, therefore, can be used to do this. It's that conflation of sexuality with pornography on top of the whole like grooming rhetoric that actually makes no sense.

If something can be used as a weapon, it will. And so you should remove it. Yeah. And like, and then twisted on top of this legal. Oh, and they say that the, the, the UN's rights of a child is also being violated by having these books in a public library. So, so even the, their legal basis here is just so, it's so whack and transparent. And yeah, so I just, I ended up reading a whole bunch about the children first act. And I think we need to do an episode on the book No Future by Lee Edelman, aka Fuck Them Kids, the book. It's about the queer death drive or something. It's basically about like the rhetorical weaponization of like save the children.

Kind of, it talks about that a lot. Yeah, fuck them kids, the book. Fuck them kids. Yeah, I just thought I was interesting because like the second you start to dive beneath any of these claims, these groups are saying it becomes very apparent how how very little they understand their own argument, but how much that doesn't matter because it is a thing about the children argument, which apparently obliterates most adults, like actual critical thinking skills. And also pointing out hypocrisy is like never done anything. Yeah, yeah. They don't give a shit that they're hypocrites. So, but yeah, so I don't really have a conclusion for this. I was just reading about it when I should have been working if any of my coworkers listen to this. I just just know it was at least library related. Yeah, I think it's, I don't actually know shit about the government of Ireland. So this was kind of the first thing I have really delved into there. But like I think it's interesting to see how it compares to the American public. library system and how cookie cutter the tactics are even when it's like a completely different

like system like their public libraries run probably a very differently than American libraries do, but they're using the same exact tactics. So that's that's the bad news. That's the bad news partner. Like we're going to take a law that's about, you know, social work and how, you know, the government is is going to deal with cases of child abuse. And we're going to make it about LGBTQ books in an age-appropriate section of a public library. It's just, it's such a waste of time and energy. I think it's going to line up well with actually Jay's section too, which is like this whole, if you work with children, you have to be like, the government can tell you then how to deprive children of the rights to know things in the name of children's safety. Yeah, I mean, there just need

to be positive rights for children to like, you have a right to use your library. and you have a right to learn things that your parents can't control and stuff like that. Well, the funny thing is that it sounds like the Children First Act was actually, or at least some of the laws in Ireland were going that direction in that like children aren't just facets of their parents. They have their own individual rights and stuff. And so there's been a series of laws that have come out in Ireland that have been trying to affirm that.

And the Children First Act was one of them. And yeah. I mean, we need like a legitimate like Marxist feminist like analysis of the way that we treat and the way that we analyze these like laws and stuff around kids coming out because like when like through like a Marxist lens like the way that the dominant capitalist society views children and like it's like all part of like reproductive labor and that like cis women exist to reproduce to produce more people in the workforce. And so children are just like a tool of capital that you're future like workers like to get more money, right? And you have to like indoctrinate them in the correct way. I mean like feminism, feminist theory has really already covered this. You don't even have to pull in Marxism too much. But like all the things that applied to women under coverture laws, you could say, you know, the liberation of women, you can have the same liberation of children that children can vote and children can have rights to.

know things and children are not the property of their parents and children have legal rights. Seriously Wrong did a good series of episodes about the rights of children, how society treats children. I kind of want to have them on again just to talk about the right to read as like a positive movement. But I think quite honestly, like maybe not in the near future, but I think that is kind of like the last area of coverture that will have to go away. It's just too in conflict with human rights of children, but it could be 10 years from now, it could be 100 years from now. Yeah. It doesn't seem to be on enough people's maps, and it should be.

Maybe this will help. Maybe all this like, save the children and library shit will, you know, you could get a law passed that like children have the right to read. I don't know. It's a start. Texas updates. It's my Texas drop. I can't find any of my drops tonight. I'm not like... Just guns and Joe Biden for everything.

Women hold up half the world. There was a ban on books. Books are just removed from a county in Texas, which is, I don't actually know how to pronounce it because everything has a weird pronunciation. Yano County, L-L-L-A-N-O, but I assume it's probably pronounced like L-A-N-O because that's everything, the bowels shift upwards in Texas versions of Spanish words. So basically what happened was their library board got taken over by like this parental rights group, which I think there were like four new members. A group of new library board members demanding books such as In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendeck, and it's perfectly normal by Robbie H. Paris were to be removed in July 2021 prior to their appointment to the new library board. Rochelle Wells, Rhonda Schneider, Gaye Baskin, and Bonnie Wallace were part of a community group

pushing for the removal of children's books. So it seems like all four of them got in just to do this. According to board members, the books were removed because they encouraged child grooming and depicted cartoon nudity. And from the actual ruling, the reporters should have mentioned this, because the books that they said were grooming were children's picture books, the butt and fart books, which depict bodily functions in a humorous manner in a cartoon format, because they believed these books, because they believed these books were obscene and promoted grooming behavior.

Like, in the Night Kitchen, isn't it just like a cartoon of a little boy running naked through something and like you just see from behind. Like it's not even, I don't know how you. The Rugrats has baby butts in it. Yeah. Like how can you call that nudity? Like how can you, how can you even use that for grooming purposes? Like I just, yeah, I've heard of people with the, having problems with in the night kitchen. And it just baffles me every time. As part of the new library board, members had control of approval of purchasing of content. The county librarian is also being soon and I can't tell how complacent this director is. The person's name is Millam.

I don't know their first name. Because once I realized that the news story I was working off of wasn't good, I had to download the 26-page actual ruling, and I didn't have enough time to do that to get through it all. But the director said it was basically like getting lists from these people saying, these are the books we don't like. And there are communications in the court record with several librarians and commissioners saying they see no problem with the book.

So basically two of these board members contacted Millam to instruct her to remove the books from the shelves. And from the emails, Millam said to pick her battles. So they were basically saying, don't fight back or they're going to make her life hard. Actually, I don't know Millam's gender either. Oh, no, it is in brackets her. Okay, that's where I got that. Seven patrons sued. The county judge and county commissioners were taking the books off the shelf and the county

and that the county had ruled were inappropriate due their messages and content. within 24 hours of the issuance of this order. Defendants, the library system, shall return all print books that were removed because of their viewpoint or content, including the following print books to the Anno County Libraries. And I thought, that's weird. Why is he saying print books? So this is before I got into the ruling. The judge dismissed the claim that the online books were to be put back in the catalog. This is where the reporter really fucked up.

So what happened here was they were getting these, you know, they were reporting. When they were pulling these print books, they were also saying, we need to suffer. press them in overdrive. And they were talking about options to implement filters or other restrictions for books in Wallace's lists that were available through overdrive. This was particularly, they were concerned with lawn boy and genderqueer being in overdrive, which there's a typo and it says lawn bow in the decision. But the reason that the judge didn't do that is because they,

is because the library system actually got rid of overdrive entirely. So he couldn't reinstate it because they would have to go back through the process. And I guess I didn't get to the part of the ruling where the judge explains his basis on this. But he's saying, you know, the plaintiffs have made a clear case showing they're likely to succeed in their viewpoint discrimination claim. The overdrive stuff just, I guess, doesn't matter because they switch to a different vendor. So they're using bibliotheca. Our old friends, bibliotheca. Enemy of the pod.

Enemy of the pod. me of the pod. But apparently these books are available through bibliotheca as well, so it doesn't, you know, it's not actually going to cause a problem. So I think that was probably why the judge said it doesn't matter. Although libraries are, this part actually kind of annoyed me. So the judge writes, although libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the first amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination. I don't think that's true. Yeah, that sounds like an argument. I have only heard people who aren't librarians or library aware make. Yeah. Well, there wasn't any precedent that I could understand where he was saying this. Again, I didn't get it the whole ruling, so maybe it's in there. But, I mean, that's a really vague term, like, viewpoint discrimination in terms of, like,

library selection and weeding. Because, like, if you say, because he talked about the, like, the musty stuff. And that's, like, irrelevant is one of the, the, the, parts of musty, which is like, that's, that is 100% subjective. We can't pretend this is not a subjective process. What we need to focus on is that these are subjective attacks on the right of queer people to exist in public and the right of minors to know about them. That's really that issue. The First Amendment just doesn't, it's great. It's a great triumph of liberalism, but it's not doing anything here. It's, it might, we might win this case. He might lose it and be

like, no, the First Amendment doesn't actually protect collection development decisions. It's not doing the heavy lifting. It kind of doesn't, to be honest. Yeah, because you can't buy every book. So you have to discriminate on. You have to make a decision, yeah. Yeah, it's subjective. It's always going to be subjective.

And there's no other way around it. And that's kind of always been my argument is like the First Amendment has applied to like either doing leftism in terms of like anti-fascism. You need to, you know, stop fascists from organizing. So you need to be able to stop them from assembling. Like, yeah, that's, you know, you should be able to ban certain groups from. using library spaces because you don't want them to assemble there. It's like if a Nazi comes into your bar and you're nice to them, he brings his friends and brings his friends and suddenly you're a Nazi bar. That can happen at a library. You are now a Nazi library, right? It's where all the Nazis

hang out. It doesn't matter how many LA states... Yeah, I don't love the library. It doesn't matter how many ALA's freedom to read statements you have hanging around if there are Nazis in your library and they're not kicked out immediately. It doesn't fucking matter. Yeah, and you've set precedent to a allow them in when you should say like, look, this is subjective, but like you can't be a Nazi here. Go away. Fuck off.

But you know what you can be is queer. And you can learn about queer people especially. You can learn about Nazis. You just don't get to like do Nazi shit in a library, right? Like that's the difference. Yeah. Like we've said before when we're talking about this, like books, I don't think any most believe books can hurt you.

But propaganda can be very effective and you do need to like, yeah. Well, it's also just like if you give people a place to do organize. on the ground. This was kind of my argument when we were talking about like our book band episode with our guest, Emily Knox. This was kind of my argument that in the part that I was disagreeing with her on was, it's the Nazi bar thing. That's what I was thinking is like if you allow your specific collection in a specific situation, like the general liberal idea of live and let live is a pretty good one. It's one of the strengths of liberalism, right? It's worked pretty well like protecting people's rights. I'm specifically talking about like you start buying Nazi shit and you start buying Christian fundamentalist shit.

And like we saw this when they defunded the library in like some rural town. They're like either it's going to be a Christian library or we're defunding it. Right. And it's like this is it. This is the Nazi bar problem. Yeah. So that is why you should be throwing out Nazi books if they're being used to actually organize Nazis in your library specifically.

Right. So I think that's where I've thought about this a lot over the past year. So I think that's where I've finally come down. I saw like an interesting phrasing on Tumblr a couple of weeks ago that I've been kind of molding over is the whole what the paradox of tolerance or whatever. Yes. And somebody said it works if like that only exists if you're thinking about it from a moral standpoint. If you're thinking about tolerance as a social contract, then it makes perfect sense to kick somebody out or, you know, not include somebody who's violating that social. contract. So like you can't tolerate intolerance. Yeah. Yeah. So like changing like sort of shifting the

thinking from oh, this is morally bad to be intolerant to we have a certain level of tolerance because we all need to get along like. Yeah. And when you yeah, when you're a Nazi bar, it doesn't matter how tolerant you are. You're a Nazi bar. Pretty much exactly. I have another article that I didn't really get a whole bunch of time. But to go through, but I remember this. I don't know if this law is going to move forward, but it's just a continuation of the depiction of sexuality with pornography. It's just, it is completely, that distinction has been erased in Texas legislation. So here's a quote, I don't care if it's lonesome dove, which is a Texas novel that would be removed under the proposed legislation.

I don't care if it's lonesome dove or any other novel. If it has sexually explicit material, I would view that as an incredible win for the students of the state not to have that material in the library. And this is, I believe, specific, specific to K-12 campuses. So it's not targeting public libraries because they're going for an easy target, which is the school libraries, right? Because they're all children. It is also other bills to make it easier to charge librarians with crimes, which I believe Jay will get into. Crime time. Yeah. And basically just, you know, if you're, if you're an educator that you have more leeway under these things because you get to is your job to allow students to learn about sex and

sexuality and and other things and like you you need leeway to do that because there are things that you should learn before you turn 18 like Sadie said I didn't get my notes ready enough for this there was a series of things happening in my real life that I were distracting me from prepping for this episode yeah when literally while we were recording I had to loan my car to someone because they were stranded outside my house. Jesus. That's where I went. Just your air conditioner.

Although the listener may not have noticed that I was gone at all. But no, the people who were repairing the air conditioner, their truck had a leak on brake fluid. So they needed to go buy brake fluid and I was like, just take my car. It'll be faster. That's funny. We can do an update on your episode if you want to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe that's what I'll do. Or we'll do another news roundup if we don't have a, I think we'll do one. of these. So, all right, that's it for me. Go ahead, Jay. Does it live for your diet time, baby? Live for your don't. Live for your don't. Yep. So to preface this, I want to say that New Hampshire's real fucking weird. For those of you who aren't like aware, because we're the first primary, we vote blue federally, right? You know, our socialist brother into the north, Vermont,

our Massachusetts blue people to the south, you know, lots of blue federally. But then all of our state legislature and the way we tend to vote at the state, like, local level tends to be Republican. Like, we have a Republican governor. And we tend to not give funding to any public things or like social good. And also, we don't pay state income tax. And so that even contributes more to things not getting money. So in New Hampshire, public goods tend to, like, not be funded well or, like, functionally at all.

Like the University of New Hampshire has some of the highest tuition in the country, like, proportionally, because it's functionally a private school because it gets almost no money from the state, even though it is the land grant, like, public state institution of the state of New Hampshire, right? I feel like that's important precedent for what is about to happen here. So this article called safety measure or book banning tool question mark, okay, through 12 obscene material spill sparks heated debate, which has been tabled. So that means that in the New Hampshire, I believe it's the house, yeah, which the house has a bazillion people in it in New Hampshire. It's one of the largest legislative bodies on the planet. Fun fact. You get paid $200 to do it.

And so it's all rich fucks or retired people. And that's also important to know because of who the voting demographic is in the House of Representatives of New Hampshire for all these house bills that show up. And it's like you hit a rock and you hit a representative of the House of New Hampshire. Like the districts are so small. There's like a million of them. And so enough voted that they didn't want to like vote on it right now. They're like, this can wait until later.

So all the Democrats tabled it. And there's more Democrats in the House and the Republican. So it's tabled for now. But what this bill does, so this is House Bill 514. You can go look at it. And basically what it would do is so I'm sure. most states have these or even federally, but like New Hampshire obscenity laws, right? Under state law, content materials are obscene if their predominant appeal is, quote,

an interest in lewdness or lascivious thoughts, according to contemporary standards in each New Hampshire County. The content must also depict or describe, quote, sexual conduct in a manner so explicit as to be patently offensive and to have no serious literary, artistic, political, scientific value. So that is like the state of New Hampshire obscenity laws. And what Bill was it? Well, part of the law gives exemptions if you are like an educator, right? If you are like a school, a library, something like that, where you can teach these materials that might otherwise qualify as being obscene, right? Like Justin just said. However, yeah, and this is since 1979. educators and librarians are protected.

However, House Bill 514 would redefine this exemption. So right now it says like, here I can pull up the exact language for us. Right now it says no recognized or established school, museum, public library, or governmental agency, nor any person acting as an employee or agent of such institution shall be arrested, etc. they are wanting to change it to say to remove school. And instead of school specifically limit it to just no recognized or established institution in the university system or community college system of New Hampshire, museum, public library, or governmental agency.

So basically, K through 12 institutions, public schools, and the people who work at them, would no longer be exempt from obscenity laws. and providing quote obscene materials to minors, right? And so educators and librarians at those institutions could now face misdemeanors and stuff for this. And the change would mean employees could be subjected to charges under the obscenity law, even if the materials in question had not been previously adjudicated by a state court. And I find this very sinister because like this is like we've been saying for a couple of episodes, So this is like a step towards like redefining public schools and public libraries and all these public goods to the point where we get rid of them.

And so everything's just private, right? And so removing school to mean everything and just having it mean colleges, basically. And so K through 12 schools, things with children in them don't count anymore. That, yeah, that like to me that feels like the chipping away of public. institutions, like schools and libraries, and the slow move towards, like, having private institutions there instead. Like, public libraries are still fine under these obscenity laws for now. And, yeah, we, like, just don't have public service and we don't fund them anyway.

So I feel like this is a dangerous state for this kind of thing to happen. And in the first place, since our support for public services is so small and dwindling to begin with. Remember, this is how the bears happen. Right? we don't fucking pay for public shit in the state. And then bears come and they eat McDonald's out of the trash. Do you want that to happen again?

Like, no. They graduate from eating McDonald's out of your trash to eating your people. Yeah, exactly. They're going to eat the fucking kids this time. Is that what you want? Right. Think of the children. And this got proposed.

Like, I love this article. I'm going to read the first paragraphs of this article because it's too good. It wasn't a physical school library book that's it, Betsy Harrington into a state of alarm about high school reading material. It was an app. Harrington's son, a student at Hillsborough during high school, had found a book on SORA, an app that gives students in participating schools in schools access to thousands of e-books to borrow on their own. The book, The Lesbianas guide to Catholic school, was a 2022 National Book Award finalist, described as a, quote, sharply funny and moving debut novel about a queer

Mexican-American girl navigating Catholic school while falling in love and learning to celebrate her true self. But on the first page, Harrington's son discovered a number of swears and coarse language. He took screenshots. He was shocked and he knew immediately that this was not for a school library, Harrington told lawmakers. Like, I thought that was the funniest fucking thing in the world. Wait, the kids said that?

I thought it was the mom who was saying that they were looking through the house. The kid looked through the app and took screenshots and stuff. Your kid's fucking lame. Yeah, kids are fucking nark. Yeah, he took screenshots. He was shocked and he knew immediately that this was not. What a fucking loser. Your kid sucks Betsy Harrington.

I hope he's listening to this. You suck, kid. And so, like, this article in the New Hampshire Bulletin points out that, like, challenges like this have been happening forever, right? you get religious parents mad that kids are worrying about dinosaurs and they're like, hey, I don't want my kid to learn about dinosaurs. And so the kid has provided alternate material instead of learning about dinosaurs, but the rest of the kids can learn about dinosaurs, right?

This happens all the fucking time and then eventually kids get homeschool, right? But obviously religious fundamentalists want to threaten, again, the public schools and public education and have us all not learning about dinosaurs because that goes against God's teachings, right? but, you know, so far that hasn't been successful and it's kind of laughed at, although I think maybe we should take those kinds of threats more seriously now, but that, you know, this bill basically wouldn't just remove those obscenity exemptions from public schools and anyone who works at them, but also would make those institutions have to have policies about how to report materials. And that also the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services could initiate challenges directly to the legislature and not just have that just be the power of the Department of Justice. And so this isn't just remove the exemption from, you know, public school teachers and librarians in public schools, but also that those institutions by a certain time period have to have policies for reporting these things. to be removed from the school's blanket.

So not just, oh, your kid, you don't want your kid reading this thing, but, oh, get rid of this thing from the school entirely. I'm assuming that this bill doesn't include a provision to, like, you know, fund that effort of the human services and Department of Education actually doing any of that. I don't think so. Because that would be my next question for New Hampshire is. you want this to happen. How the fuck are you going to pay people to get it to happen? Yeah, it's like all you got to report it to the fucking principal and stuff. It's all a bunch of just like time limits basically. Yeah, it's fucking stupid. But what this sort of, this specific like looking at, oh, obscenity laws and removing exemptions for public schools and education, this actually is not like in New Hampshire a couple years ago, there was something. called the colloquially known as the divisive concepts bill that actually got passed into law. There was a bunch of fucking word salad and that I think now only applies to public schools,

but because I used to work for a public university in the state of New Hampshire, like a state university, this applied to us as well when it was still like a bill and we were all afraid of it, where basically school staff and public employees may not advocate that a person of one race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or other protected class is inherently superior to another. They may not teach that one group is inherently oppressive or prejudiced against another. They may not argue for different treatments based on a person's protected characteristics, and they may not argue that people can't treat people of different characteristics equally. and people who do and are reported to do so can, you know, face human rights violations and shit.

And basically this, it's one of those word salad fucking bills that like, it's like, yeah. You've believed your own ideology so much that you think this is actually what anti-racist work is about. And so you've accidentally written a law that's so stupid where I saw one professor who got like a letter about like, hey, are you teaching anything banned by this bill? and he said no, because, like, let me look at the language, and the language is like, like, are you inherently racist? No, anthropologists don't believe you're inherently racist. And it also, like, there is a part in this law that protects, like, teaching about, you know, like teaching about something in the course of academic instruction, especially regarding, like,

historic events and stuff. So, like, it does explicitly protect teaching about slavery. stuff. But, you know, like, you read it and you're like, oh, duh, obviously. This is already, you know, already kind of covered by six other laws. But also, like, if you argue against it, it's like, oh, what? Do you want children to be taught bigotry? Why are you arguing against this? Right. It's like one of those that's like misguidedly reactionary, but also very tactful. It knows exactly what it's doing. Like, it knows that critical race theory and shit isn't actually what the fearmongering says it is, but that's not the point. It's the point

to be framed that way. It's an entire bill about framing and it has just confused everyone. Every single article that I read about it was just public school teachers going like, am I allowed to give a positive grade to an essay that is pro affirmative action? Yeah, you are. That professor was right. It's like you've read this law so stupidly that like no one believes these things. It's a straw man argument. Exactly. And the Democrats actually literally like fucking yesterday or something proposed a bill that would repeal it. And I think it's tabled as well right now. But it basically is just like a bill to just strike all of that language out that was added. A bill just to nullify because it's fucking stupid and it's just confused people.

And so this is like, I feel like that bill and that law is like relevant to this obscenity thing that is happening right now and like how it is framing, it's framing educators as hostile. Education is good. Those who educate are bad, basically. They're, you know, liberal indoctrinator groomers. It's like it's teaching people both students and parents. to be suspicious of people who teach their children, that anyone that is not them that teaches their children is someone to be suspicious of and who to be hostile against, right?

Like, that is the kind of mindset that a lot of these bills are getting at. Educators are inherently suspicious. You know, they are, you know, the grooming rhetoric, right? and another like rhetorical tool that's been used for this current for the proposed one about obscenity is you know a lot of people rightly saying that this is just going to lead to book bans right and one of the representatives that's for it was like oh no no no this isn't about book banning this is about a parent's right to control it's about parental control and my like that meme of the the goose chasing after the person going like, States right to do what, motherfucker? Like that meme?

I'm like, parents right to do what, motherfucker to ban books? Like that's, that's what this is a state's rights argument, but about book banning and parent control, right? And I thought that was dumb.

And I thought this was so interesting, especially that this article was about like an app and like ebooks on an app. Because it's like in Massachusetts, Well, it wasn't just in Massachusetts, but I know a lot of Massachusetts librarians were the ones talking about it. The hoopla thing. Well, the fucking, what was it like the pro-life and Nazi books that were in hoopla? Yeah. Yeah, I remember.

And we tried to get those out and they stuck to their guns and protected it. But apparently books about like cool Mexican lesbians who are trying to get through high school. Apparently that, you know, you can. can keep kids from reading that, but you got to leave in the like pro-life Nazi shit, right? A bit, you know, that was Massachusetts, though. I think it's interesting that that's SORA because. Which I haven't heard of, but I'm not a public library person. It's it's overdrive.

Oh, is it? Yeah, it's just overdrive for schools, for school libraries in particular. So I could see how it, like, if you start targeting that, then it'll sort of, I can see how that can escalate to public libraries and apps and stuff. But it also makes me think of, was it New York Public Library or Brooklyn Public Library, who was basically like, if you're a teen who is physically on the ground in the U.S., you can have a card through us and access are. So it's like, I wonder how much of the countermeasures of this kind of stuff is going to have to come from other states.

Because like, how do you stop a New Hampshire kid from signing up for and getting a, broken public library card. Right. I think the apps work like functionally the same. So yeah. And part of me wonders like so YA is a marketing term, right? And YA is mainly written for a 35 year old white women. Like literally I've had public friends who work in publishing say that what YA gets

published and picked at least in the mainstream is ones that they know will appeal to an adult demographic, right? but when does why a marketing term get like weaponized and sanitized like because it's already pretty sanitized in the mainstream

sense a lot of people like to say that it's more diverse than anything and that we should replace everything with it and those people are stupid but like when does it get weaponized to be like oh this is what the teens are reading and all the book about books about Mexican lesbians and Catholic

school are YA you gender queer is like YA or whatever like why don't we get rid of YA or or whatnot like when does this go all the way up to the fucking you know attacking a genre because of an age demographic right yeah just yeah parental rights for what every time I hear the phrase parental rights or like parental control I'm like control to do what motherfuckers like I just is it's is it's is It makes me instantly suspicious just because, like... This bill has been referred to in some places as banning books, but that's not the intent of this bill, he said. Instead, he presented the bill as a means to provide parental control. Which, like, that's not the intention of the bill, but motherfucker, how is it actually going to get used? Yeah.

Yeah. Intention is an action. Mm-hmm. But, yeah, so that's the live free and think of the children. the state folks. Think of the children. That's New Hampshire right now. But then there's like a bear and a

a poise no stepy treant like flag. Shit's fucked. But maybe hopefully this will get repealed. The divisive concepts things will get repealed. And hopefully this stupid other bill will like stay tabled or not go through or won't get voted through. Because again it hasn't

this obscenity laws one. not been voted through yet. It is on the table and has been voted to be tabled. It's been proposed. It's been put forward. It has entered into like it has been in a meeting or whatever, but they haven't voted on it one way or the other. So it's not. Hampshire, where the bears are freer than the children. Yeah. I want the children to be able to go feral and eat toxoplasma at a McDonald's trash can. That's freedom, baby. For your day. You don't have to wear a seatbelt? And you shouldn't have to.

I'm kidding, kids. You should always wear a seatbelt. Yes. I'd be dead for seatbelts. I love those news stories from archival footage from like the 70s and 80s that are like various like local interest stories about like they're banning drinking and driving. And they're like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do then. They just go around everyone being like, you can't tell me not to drink a six pack in my car. And I watched one the other day that was about seatbelts and was like, you can't tell me to wear a seatbelt in my car.

Yeah, New Hampshire is just the don't tell me what to do. You're not my dad. Stay, like, literally. Apparently, like, tomorrow, they're probably going to, like, vote on, like, legalizing weed, though. Nice. And it'll like apparently. Small state people. You can go any of the other ones that already have.

Yeah, no, I can go down to Massachusetts, like 30-minute drive and get it. Maine, you have to have a card to get it recreationally. Massachusetts, they don't give a fuck. But apparently it's not whether... Well, so in Maine, it's, you can get it recreationally. It's fine or whatever. And I think you, but you have to, but in New Hampshire to get weed from Maine, you have to have a medical card.

You don't have to to get it from Massachusetts, though. But apparently the question is not, are we going to legalize it? But how much do we tax it? Jesus. None. Can live for your die. Pup. Boo-poo.

All right. I'm hungry. I've got to go do stuff anyway. Any final thoughts? Yeah. Get involved in your school boards and your library boards. Remember, get involved in your school boards and your library boards. I know that it sounds fucking lib as shit to say to do anything electoral or to get involved in your politics in any way.

But local politics is where things actually matter and you get things done. So go do it, folks. We're going to be beaten on that drum for a long time. be the change. Yeah. And I mean, in Lano, it was like they took over the library board. Yeah, exactly. A group of friends took over the library board, like four people who clearly knew each other.

So go for it. Get your D&D group. Yeah. Get your D&D group. Yeah. Just role play some library and or school board members for a couple of rounds and then actually go out and fucking do it. Genius.

Sadie, you should be the president of the world. If only local politics were as easy Or people were as enthusiastic about local politics as they were about like their wow guilds That was I hope we I hope a lot of I hope we have a lot of listeners who get insulted at you For saying that People organizing wow guilds isn't easy either

Is exactly what they're going to say I know that for a fact Fucking nerds Okay Good night. Good night. Good night.