Not 100% sure if this kind of post is allowed, but it relates to books and it looks like there are no rules that forbids posts like this, so I thought I would get the perspective of some people who like to read.
The tl;dr is, lots of places in the US (including many places that aren’t mentioned in this article) are having right-wing groups trying to ban books from schools and libraries. At first it seemed to be mostly around Florida, but it keeps happening more and more (particularly in Red States, but not limited to). This article talks about it a bit, but again, it’s a thing that has been happening for awhile now, this is just an example to give you some context.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1214523941/library-books-bans-age-appropriate-movie-ratings
Obviously, this sucks. And again obviously, the only reason why “concerned parents” are only now suddenly concerned about books in this way is because they’re trying to suppress LGBT+ people and to limit the access of information about the LGBT+ community and sex education as a whole (look at the books they want to ban).
So, what is the solution to this problem? In the article a book-rating system is mentioned, which I agree with the point that IF they do that, it 100% should not be the job of the government. Film, Games, and (sort of) Music all have their own self-regulated ratings boards. Would you want to see that for books as well? I’m not necessarily against it (although it’s kinda weird still), but of course, the problem being what they consider “age appropriate” for different levels. Is a kiss “not appropriate” just if it’s gay, or one of the characters is trans?
While again, I’m not necessarily strictly opposed to books having a self-regulated ratings board on principal which would (in theory) assign books G-R like ratings with maybe small warning descriptors. But I find it odd that they’ve been fine for centuries without it, and that it only now is a “problem”. And given who the people who see it as a “problem” are, I don’t know if I would trust them to be the ones making the rating call for a book. But you better believe they would throw a fit and continue their nonsense protests the moment that fox news tells them that the ones who are rating books are part of “the left”. So who does that leave to do the actual ratings? No one.
Then there are other issues, like how does this then affect self-published works, how does this affect the thousands of books already in publication, etc. There’s just so many questions and so many variables to this, and in a lot of ways I feel like it’s kind of way too late to practically implement a book rating system. The way too that this relates to libraries also gets into weird territory. How would they then classify books, decide what books should or shouldn’t get added, and so forth? Is prohibiting access to books really something we want libraries to be doing?
What are your thoughts? Do you think a ratings-board would help this situation, or would it only exasperate things? Can you think of any other practical solutions to keep these people away from books and libraries, before they ruin what libraries are meant to be? Can you even count the layers of hypocrisy that right-wing people are jumping through in trying to limit freedom of speech and access to information while claiming to be patriotic?
These bans have nothing to do with the content in the books in most cases. It is about who wrote the books.
Do you have any idea how ambiguously gay all of classic literature really is? Or how unambiguously gay all of recorded history is?
Even if there’s a rating system to accomodate Shakespeare’s male lover addressed in the Sonnets, or Richard the Lionheart’s affair with the King of France in the middle of the Crusades, such a thing would never resolve the issue because this has never been about “protecting kids.” This is and has always been a panic attack against modernity, a tantrum by a dying demographic who blame queer people for their own lack of control in life. You might as well try to reach a compromise with ISIS.