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School board member who once championed book bans now faces death threats for changing her mind
(www.lgbtqnation.com)
this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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politics
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I agree that book bans are symbolically a big issue, but I also think it's hilarious that the conservative idea of shielding children from "dangerous" information is to take the books out of school libraries, as if anyone uses them to get LGBTQ-related information. When I was in school, the library was just a place where you would study, with most of the books being related to the curriculum. Basically no one went there to read about complex, modern, fast-moving topics like queerness. Kids these days all know how to look shit up online, and most school libraries have a computer lab with fairly permissive internet access. Most kids will use that to research any "forbidden" information that conservatives would find offensive.
Based on that, it really seems like book bans aren't mean to solve and practical issues for conservatives at all, and are moreso meant as vehicles to broadcast and systemically solidify the exclusion of ideas and people they don't personally like. Like a child shouting "you can't play here anymore!" on a playground to someone they don't like, only for the excluded party to go right back to what they were doing uninterrupted.
This will not be the beginning of the GOP "seeing the error of their ways" or anything like that.
We have seen this many times before, in the public and private sector, up and down the political ladder. She is far from the first, and hopefully far from the last person to have finally had enough with Trump, the MAGA movement, all this conservative extremism, etc. But people like her don't cause her colleagues to reflect on things and reconsider. People like her are simply excommunicated from the tribe and the movement marches on as if they were never a part of it. Or worse, they march on as if she was a part of the problem all along and she becomes public enemy #1.
At her level, the most she can expect is to be expelled from the school board or replaced in the next election with whatever MAGA psycho wants to ban another 800 books because one of the authors once dated someone who's uncle may have been gay in a previous life, and the other 799 books need to be burnt in public for sharing shelf space with it.
The Christo-fascist ultra-maga republicans are allergic to facts.
I wonder how many stockholm syndrome conservatives that are trapped.
Oh no. Anyway.
No, this is big. Someone committed to the cause looked at the evidence and reconsidered her opinion.
This can be useful to get through to some that they have been manipulated, that they have been made terrified of education for unfounded reasons.
Anyone converted away is a win, even if not statisically significant.