Summary
Rightwing groups across the US are driving a wave of legislation to restrict books in school and public libraries, targeting content deemed “sexually explicit” or “obscene,” often affecting LGBTQ+ and race-related titles.
Texas leads with 31 bills and 538 book bans in the 2023–24 school year.
Proposed laws, like Texas Senate Bill 13, shift book selection power from librarians to parent-led advisory boards.
Critics, including librarians and legal scholars, warn these efforts amount to censorship, risk violating First Amendment rights, and reduce access in underserved communities.
Where do we think those ideas come from? The way you say that makes it sound like you don’t believe anyone could come to that idea without that specific religion’s religious text. That projection is, by far, probably the most frightening thing in this thread.
People are fully capable of being good without being forced to. Yea, most are stupid and plenty are nasty but to act like the ideas of baseline human freedoms must have come from the bible is so weird.
I’m not saying it’s not possible, but that’s how it happened in the Western world.
Would it later on happen “naturally” without it? Maybe; hard to say, we can only speculate since it’s not how it went.
But even from a “Christian” perspective, I would agree, yes it would; these values align with God’s will and He would have put these ideas in peoples’ heads even if the Bible didn’t exist.
Geez, so much for getting free will, eh?
There were scores of Christians who thought slavery was great. If the bible was really the ticket into being against it then it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Instead we get The Americas™, a collection of stolen lands turned into a mire of plantations and now into prisons built on making said the prisoners work for pennies to prop up the rest of the country while many more “free” people are below the poverty line despite putting in their 40+ hours of hard, often physical, labour. Even people that are “paid decently” aren’t getting their fair share. Slavery coexists with the bible just fine, and in fact thrives more in more religious regions.