This was on twitter, it is what the supporters of DeathSantis, tRump, and other fundmentlist republican racist bigots.
Category: Written Media / Books
A thought about not being allowed to mention anything same sex related in schools.
Social Security denies disability benefits based on list with jobs from 1977
I got a comment I want to answer on the post I made about this. I used The Washington Post article but when I went to reread it I no longer had access to the article. So I found another report on what the Social Security hearings are like. I have been through them. The report is telling the truth. It is ridiculous the way they try to prevent disabled people from getting much needed government assistance. Hugs
Story by Lisa Rein •8mo
Social Security denies disability benefits based on list with jobs from 1977© Bettman Archive
He had made it through four years of denials and appeals, and Robert Heard was finally before a Social Security judge who would decide whether he qualified for disability benefits. Two debilitating strokes had left the 47-year-old electrician with halting speech, an enlarged heart and violent tremors.
There was just one final step: A vocational expert hired by the Social Security Administration had to tell the judge if there was any work Heard could still do despite his condition. Heard was stunned as the expert canvassed his computer and announced his findings: He could find work as a nut sorter, a dowel inspector or an egg processor — jobs that virtually no longer exist in the United States.
Nut sorter job description from Dictionary of Occupational Titles
“Whatever it is that does those things, machines do it now,” said Heard, who lives on food stamps and a small stipend from his parents in a subsidized apartment in Tullahoma, Tenn. “Honestly, if they could see my shaking, they would see I couldn’t sort any nuts. I’d spill them all over the floor.”
How a Social Security program piled huge fines on the poor and disabledHe was still hopeful the administrative law judge hearing his claim for $1,300 to $1,700 per month in benefits had understood his limitations.
But while the judge agreed that Heard had multiple, severe impairments, he denied him benefits, writing that he had “job opportunities” in three occupations that are nearly obsolete and agreeing with the expert’s dubious claim that 130,000 positions were still available sorting nuts, inspecting dowels and processing eggs.
Laura Parsons of Fortescue, N.J., who has a connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, was denied disability benefits based on outdated jobs she was told she could do. Her appeal is pending.© Mark Makela for The Washington Post
Every year, thousands of claimants like Heard find themselves blocked at this crucial last step in the arduous process of applying for disability benefits, thanks to labor market data that was last updated 45 years ago.
The jobs are spelled out in an exhaustive publication known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The vast majority of the 12,700 entries were last updated in 1977. The Department of Labor, which originally compiled the index, abandoned it 31 years ago in a sign of the economy’s shift from blue-collar manufacturing to information and services.
Social Security, though, still relies on it at the final stage when a claim is reviewed. The government, using strict vocational rules, assesses someone’s capacity to work and if jobs exist “in significant numbers” that they could still do. The dictionary remains the backbone of a $200 billion disability system that provides benefits to 15 million people.
It lists 137 unskilled, sedentary jobs — jobs that most closely match the skills and limitations of those who apply for disability benefits. But in reality, most of these occupations were offshored, outsourced, and shifted to skilled work decades ago. Many have disappeared altogether.
Workers shell pecans in a union plant in San Antonio in 1939. Nut sorting is among the jobs in a Labor Department publication that Social Security relies on to decide disability benefits, even though most of the sedentary, unskilled jobs it lists have been automated.© Corbis via Getty Images
Since the 1990s, Social Security officials have deliberated over how to revise the list of occupations to reflect jobs that actually exist in the modern economy, according to audits and interviews. For the last 14 years, the agency has promised courts, claimants, government watchdogs and Congress that a new, state-of-the-art system representing the characteristics of modern work would soon be available to improve the quality of its 2 million disability decisions per year.
But after spending at least $250 million since 2012 to build a directory of 21st century jobs, an internal fact sheet shows, Social Security is not using it, leaving antiquated vocational rules in place to determine whether disabled claimants win or lose. Social Security has estimated that the project’s initial cost will reach about $300 million, audits show.
Social Security offices critical to disability benefits hit breaking point“It’s a great injustice to these people,” said Kevin Liebkemann, a New Jersey attorney who trains disability attorneys and has written extensively on Social Security’s use of vocational data. “We’re relying on job information from the 1970s to say thumbs-up or thumbs-down to people who desperately need benefits. It’s horrifying.”
Obsolete jobs
In 2022, it is not easy to find a nut sorter (code 521.687-086) in the national economy who “observes nut meats” on a conveyor belt and picks out broken, shriveled, or wormy nuts. How many workers in America inspect dowel pins (code 669.687-014), searching for flaws from square ends to splits, then discard them by hand? And even if Heard were qualified to remove virus-bearing fluid from fertile chicken eggs for use in vaccines by sawing off the end of an egg and removing its fetal membrane, that work is largely automated today.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Labor Department, has built a new, interactive system for Social Security using a national sample of 60,000 employers and 440 occupations covering 95 percent of the economy. But Social Security still has not instructed its staff to use it.
Very few jobs still exist for manual scoreboard operators, but they remain on the list of unskilled, sedentary jobs that Social Security considers in disability claims.© Brian Bahr/Getty Images
“They regularly tell us they plan on using the data,” Hilery Simpson, the labor bureau’s associate commissioner for compensation and working conditions, said of Social Security officials. The data collection and estimation “have gone through extensive testing and use the best-in-class statistical methods,” he said. The survey is available to the public on the labor bureau’s website.
Social Security has not explained why it has yet to implement the labor bureau survey.
Acting Social Security commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi declined to be interviewed. In a statement, she said, “To date, the best available source for occupational information has been the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. We have enlisted vocational experts to provide more detailed and current information about the jobs available in the national economy, while we continue to work on creating our own occupational data source informed by [the Bureau of Labor Statistics] that best reflects the current job market.”
A spokeswoman for the agency declined to answer questions about a timeline for putting the modern data into use.
Social Security’s delays in updating the database of job titles are rooted in conflicting political considerations, shifting leadership, and the drift that can bedevil large federal projects, according to current and former officials, auditors and disability advocates.
A modern list of occupations would create new winners and losers in the application process — posing political sensitivities for a program that has long drawn judgment that the government is either too generous or not generous enough. Over two decades, Social Security has been led by six acting commissioners and just three Senate-confirmed leaders, leaving power vacuums at the top that can delay costly projects. Many advocates believe the agency is motivated to delay the project so it can deny more claimants benefits.
“The scandal is that everybody wants this data discussed in terms of who will be hurt and who will be helped,” said David Weaver, a former Social Security associate commissioner who helped lead the early effort to modernize. “But a lot of money has been spent. You have the gold-standard of federal data, and Social Security is not producing anything.”
Social Security denies disability benefits based on list with jobs from 1977© Provided by The Washington Post
Congress continues to approve more than $30 million per year for the survey of modern jobs without asking hard questions about why the data sits unused, congressional aides and former Social Security officials said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called on Social Security to move forward.
“Occupational definitions used by the federal government need to reflect the reality of the work Americans are doing today,” Wyden said in a statement. He warned that data on modern jobs “must be handled with care to ensure that nobody is wrongly denied their earned benefits.”
Federal courts, meanwhile, keep sending denied claims back to Social Security to redo its decisions, raising alarms that the government is shortchanging disabled Americans with arbitrary judgments that put it at legal risk.
“Does anyone use a typewriter anymore?” Richard Posner, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, asked in a 2015 decision reversing an administrative law judge’s denial of benefits to a disabled man the judge claimed could work as an “addresser” — one who “addresses cards” by hand or typewriter. Posner called a vocational expert’s claim that 200,000 such jobs still exist today a “fabrication.”
Addresser job description from Dictionary of Occupational Titles© TWP/TWP
Others have not been as fortunate. Few claimants without attorneys are aware that the jobs used to deny them benefits have been pulled from obscurity. And many lawyers representing them lack the expertise and resources to take a case to federal court, say advocates, vocational experts and judges who rule in these cases.
“Every day we made decisions we don’t necessarily agree with,” said George Gaffaney, an administrative law judge in the Chicago area. “It’s troubling.”
A need to modernize
The Dictionary of Occupational Titles was first published in 1938 to help a country pulling out of the Great Depression match workers with jobs. Each entry contained the time to train for the job, the aptitude required, physical demands, the work performed — but not any recognition of which jobs match with the cognitive impairments common among the disabled today.
With its benefit decisions hinging largely on whether someone’s impairment limits them from doing past jobs or other jobs, Social Security needed a resource with accurate information about available work. But by the time the Labor Department retired the red hardcover book three decades ago, it was already stocked with jobs that, if not already gone, were quickly vanishing from the economy: elevator operators, thaw-shed heater tenders, window shade ring sewers. And it did not include a host of emerging information-economy jobs, from web designers to employment recruiters.
Pandemic struggles still afflict Social Security, a last lifeline for many
Inside Social Security, the publication’s 1991 demise set off a decade of hand-wringing. Workgroups, panels and committees of experts formed — all while the agency continued to rely on the outdated jobs list. By 1998, the Labor Department had developed a new database of jobs and what was required to do them. Social Security brought in another round of experts to determine whether that system, dubbed O*NET, could serve its disability program.
It took until 2008 — a full decade — to reach consensus: the agency needed to develop its own vocational information because existing federal data lacked enough characteristics of jobs disabled people could do. So in 2012 Social Security signed a contract with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to design a modern system that would help make accurate disability determinations.
A closed gun retailer’s records are photographed for duplication to microfilm at the ATF National Tracing Center on June 23, 2010, in Martinsburg, W.Va. Few document preparers are left in the U.S.© The Washington Post
The same year, the Government Accountability Office began questioning the project’s cost estimates and schedule. After three years of tests, field economists began their surveys in 2015. When that data was delayed, government watchdogs began warning that the project was in danger of becoming a case study in the challenges of large federal investments.
In 2018, the agency’s inspector general wrote in an audit, “It remains crucial that [Social Security] leadership commit to ensuring appeal applications receive fair and consistent treatment.” In response, a Social Security official set a target of fiscal 2020 to put the modern data into use and wrote, “we continue to work diligently to avoid delays in its implementation.”
The labor bureau now says it will finish a second wave of data collection next year. A third is planned.
“We thought we could do it in 10 years. It might take 20 years,” said Byron Haskins, who worked on the project as a branch chief from 2010 to 2016. “In the meantime, we’re not standing on solid ground on these decisions.”
When New York art collector and apparel company investor Andrew Saul was confirmed as President Donald Trump’s Social Security administrator in June 2019, his team drew up plans to start using the modern jobs data, concluding that disabled people, particularly older Americans, could learn new skills in an economy with more sedentary, skilled jobs. The new survey could tighten eligibility for benefits, Saul believed — a White House priority.
“It was going to make the system fairer,” Saul said in an interview. “People who deserved disability would get it, and those who didn’t would not.”
But the plan set off a furor among advocates, who opposed a provision that would have made it harder for older workers to qualify for benefits. The Biden administration quickly shelved it and the president fired Saul in 2021.
Old data
Even so, advocates and opponents agree on one thing: A disability system that relies on obsolete jobs to decide claims is gambling with taxpayers and with the courts.
“It’s never really been blessed by Social Security,” said David Camp, president of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives, reflecting the view of many advocates. “The agency won’t take the step to clean up the system because they know we’ll win more cases.”
A worker inspects pistachio nuts for quality control at the IberoPistacho S.L.U. farm and processing plant in Manzanares, Spain. The job is now often automated, but Social Security experts frequently cite it to disability claimants as work they can find in the modern economy.© Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg News
Mark Warshawsky, deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy under Saul, described the antiquated vocational policy as “an arbitrary system.”
“How hard is it for the federal government to make change?” he asked. “That’s not a political thing. Spending almost $300 million with nothing to show for it is embarrassing.”
The current system is leading thousands of disability claims per year to be denied that would otherwise have a good chance of approval, data suggests. The inspector general’s 2018 audit showed that from fiscal 2013 through 2017, occupational information was used to decide more than half of all initial claims and in four in five decisions at the hearing level when decisions are appealed. The data does not show if it was the deciding factor.
But a 2011 study commissioned by Social Security found the 11 jobs most commonly cited by disability examiners when denying benefits. The top job was addresser, used in almost 10 percent of denials. Twelve years later, little has changed, advocates say.
Estimates by Social Security’s experts of how many of these outdated jobs remain in the economy are also widely off the mark, courts have found.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2019 that Social Security judges could uphold agency decisions even when vocational experts refuse to provide data on how they come up with job numbers. But the decision led to a blistering dissent from Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who cited dubious expert claims that 120,000 “sorter” and 240,000 “bench assembler” jobs are available to the disabled without clear evidence.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit noted a similar problem while overturning a Social Security judge’s denial of benefits to a Wisconsin man.
“All three judges on this panel, assisted by very talented law clerks, read the transcript of the [vocational expert’s] testimony multiple times,” the court wrote. “And yet nobody can explain with coherence or confidence what the [vocational expert] did to arrive at her job-numbers estimate. … There has to be a better way.”
The expert claims can be equally baffling to claimants.
At his hearing before an administrative law judge in Pennsauken, N.J., in July 2019, Sean Dooley described the chronic pain and limited stamina from diabetes, thyroid issues and degenerative disk disease that had kept him from working as a jewelry salesman for three years.
Sean Dooley suffers from diabetes, thyroid issues and degenerative disk disease. His claim for disability benefits was denied on the basis of vocational testimony that he could work as an order clerk, addresser or call-out operator. A federal court remanded his appeal to Social Security for a new hearing. He lives in his sister’s garage in Pennsville, N.J.,© Mark Makela for The Washington Post
His mother testified that at 400 pounds, her son struggled to sit, stand, bend over and lift. Yet a vocational expert said Dooley could work as an order clerk, an addresser or a call-out operator — a job he had never heard of. An expert whose software is used by many vocational experts has calculated that 2,000 addressers are left in the U.S., 2,060 call-out operators who compile credit information and 424 order clerks.
In a written decision three months later, Judge Lisa Hibner Olson denied Dooley benefits, overruling his lawyer’s arguments that the jobs were obsolete.
“It was like I’m hit with a torpedo,” recalled Dooley, 46, who is living on his mother’s meager retirement savings in his sister’s garage in Pennsville, N.J. “With these goofy jobs, there was no way they were ever going to approve me. If I could work, I would be working.”
Dooley’s denial was overturned by a U.S. district court and remanded to the same Social Security judge, who has scheduled a new hearing for January.
The problem is not limited to appeals heard before judges. State offices that first decide disability claims place blame for a historic backlog exceeding 1 million cases in part on the obsolete jobs system, which requires expertise most do not have.
“We’ve heard the message from Social Security, ‘We’re working on vocational policy changes,’ for 10 years,” said Jacki Russell, director of Disability Determination Services in North Carolina and president of the National Council of Disability Determination Directors. “ ‘It’s very sensitive,’ they say. Meanwhile, we’re over here trying to make the best decisions we can with a massive backlog.” Russell’s office of 600 employees has just two vocational experts.
In Maryland last spring, Larry Underwood quit in despair after 25 years testifying for Social Security as a vocational expert. He had concluded that there was no valid method to determine what work a disabled claimant could still do, and that it was impossible to project jobs in that field.
“I realized that a lot of vocational experts, including myself, have been giving false testimony for years,” Underwood said. “The numbers are not accurate. I decided I can’t do that anymore.”
A few advocates with expertise in vocational evidence have begun training disability attorneys, warning that if they aren’t savvy enough to rebut the job claims, they will lose.
Laura Parsons was told by a vocational expert at a hearing before a Social Security judge that she could find a job hand-addressing envelopes or preparing documents for microfilming. The judge denied her claim for benefits.© Mark Makela for The Washington Post
Laura Parsons — a former medical assistant from Fortescue, N.J., with a connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers Danlos syndrome — saw that problem firsthand at her hearing in April 2021, in which a vocational expert testified that she could get jobs as an addresser or document preparer. The judge ended the hearing without allowing Parsons to testify.
“They want me to get a job addressing envelopes that doesn’t exist anymore,” Parsons said.
Social Security plans to ask the labor bureau to refresh its occupational information every five years. The next wave is scheduled to start in 2023 at a cost of $167 million, auditors found. Congressional staff have not been briefed on the project in at least three years, aides said. It is not clear if they have asked for a briefing. Meanwhile, courts continue to overturn denials based on the old data — even pleading with Social Security to modernize its system.
“It’s not our place to prescribe a way forward,” the Court of Appeals concluded in the case of the Wisconsin man who had been denied benefits. “Perhaps the Commissioner will read this opinion as an invitation to bring long-awaited and much-needed improvement to this aspect of administrative disability determination.”
“If God Was Real He Would’ve Flicked Hitler’s Head Off” | Eddie Izzard’s Stripped | Universal Comedy
Evidence Against God
Hello all. I have many grand religious followers who come to this blog. I do respect what they comment but when it comes to the supernatural, the bible specifically, and all fables and myths I prefer reality. I am sadly not able to accept things that can not be shown to exist with all the science available to us at this time. I once had a really nice but “dumb” woman I do like, say to me she knew her god existed. When I demanded proof she said she felt him. I then demanded to know where her god was when as a child I was being raped, she had no answer, yet still kept existing her god not only was real but was constantly in her life. She could feel him. I gave up. She couldn’t even set aside her Catholic faith long enough to feel sympathy for a raped child. That told me why so many people stay with the religion that has the highest child abuse statistics. Just before I left her home she touched my arm, told me she would talk to her priest, and asked me to come to her church with her that she went to four times a week. If I did I would see her god was real, alive, and wanting to be part of my life. She had just set aside what I had told her, that her god had ignored I was being raped as a child. She couldn’t reconcile it with her faith so she just lost it, shut it out, ignored it and instead still pushed for her deity.
On every blog I read dealing with a case of a religious figure of any faith abusing a child, the question comes up “How can anyone still support that religion, how can they give them more money”? As I found out it is simple. They simply deny or refuse to deal with facts. This was a woman I have known for 15 years, helped out repeatedly, even gave her a printer when she did not have one. I later found out she was using it to print the church bulletins for the services, but I did not care. I gave it to her because she claimed to need one and couldn’t afford it. Yet where was her wealthy church in giving her a printer to do their work for them? Yet it was up to me, an atheist child abuse survivor that gave her the means to do a service for her wealthy church.
Anyway enjoy the video. Again this is not an attack on those that have a spiritual code or belief that leads them through their daily life, this is to refute those that claim the bible is the literal word of an all knowing god and never wrong. Hugs
The Biblical Serpent’s Descendants
I started my atheist journey with this person. From him to many others, but sometimes I still go back to listen to him because he makes so much sense. I recommend you all look at his past videos or even by his book, which I did. He was a child in a religious home who grew up asking questions. Hugs
Right-Wing Christians Must Indoctrinate Other People’s Children Into a Biblical Worldview, Says FRC’s George Barna
Notice the title specifies “Indoctrinate Other People’s Children”. These people don’t care about other parents rights to raise their children as they wish, they don’t care about other families religious views. They are saying their long time actions in public schools out loud, to force their god, their religion, on everyone else. Yet they are always claiming they are the victims, that they are being discriminated against. The video is at the links, Hugs
By Peter Montgomery | October 7, 2021 5:09 pm
Evangelical pollster George Barna spoke at FRC’s “Pray Vote Stand” conference on Oct. 7, 2021 (Image from event livestream)
While right-wing groups are mobilizing angry mobs to yell at school board members that parents have the right to control what their children are taught, evangelical pollster George Barna told religious-right activists at the Family Research Council’s “Pray Vote Stand” summit Thursday that it is their duty to try to indoctrinate other people’s children into a “biblical worldview.”
Barna, one of the first senior fellows at FRC’s recently established Center for Biblical Worldview, specializes in studying what he calls “SAGE Cons”—Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. What is most striking about FRC and Barna’s “worldview” project is how few people—and how few conservative evangelicals—measure up to their right-wing “biblical worldview” standard.
When the Center for Biblical Worldview launched in May, FRC President Tony Perkins said that a biblical worldview “is only achieved when a person believes that the Bible is true, authoritative, and then taught how it is applicable to every area of life, which enables them to live out those beliefs.”
Barna told “Pray Vote Stand” attendees that only 6 percent of American adults measure up to that standard of a biblical worldview—and only one out of five people who attend an evangelical church.
“Biblically, it’s parents’ responsibility to shape their children’s worldview—both directly and indirectly,” Barna declared. But, he said, only 7 percent of parents with children under the age of 18 have a biblical worldview. That’s a problem that people with a biblical worldview must fix, he said:
That doesn’t portend well for the future because you can’t give what you don’t have. And so, the rest of us who do get it have to come alongside these children in some way. We’ve got to look for opportunities—sports teams, other kinds of activities that are taking place to help them shape things. You can’t wait for your church to get the job done.
…
This is a battle for the mind, the heart, and the soul of America, and so it’s up to you. It’s up to me—those of us who know God, love God, love Christ, read his word, study his word, embrace, embody his word—and to take that into the world in every way, shape, and form that we can.
Ultimately, we will win or lose this battle long term by what we do with children today. And so when you leave this conference, I’m asking you to think about making a list identifying the children whose lives you can impact. It is our biblical responsibility to raise up children to know, love, and serve God the all their heart, mind, strength, and soul, and I pray that you will do that with all the energy and wisdom that you can muster.
Barna’s PowerPoint slide hammered home his message that parents without a biblical worldview have “neither the vision nor the equipping” to “raise spiritual champions.” That means, it said, “True Christians must seize the moment … Go, make disciples!”
In 2017, Barna spoke at the Values Voter Summit—FRC’s annual gathering that has been rebranded as Pray Vote Stand—and told participants that the 2016 election was a “Christians vs. non-Christians” election and that Trump became president because “God did a miracle for us.”
Hate Group Summit Speaker Calls On Christians To Indoctrinate School Children Into “Biblical Worldview”
https://x.com/RightWingWatch/status/1702703674789666842?s=20
How Conservatives Sabotage Public Schools
Very informative how conservative and fundamentalist religious leaders have been attacking the public school system with disastrous results. She does talk rapidly but the CC is pretty good for YouTube. Hugs
Southern culture is American culture
The American South is a complicated place, and we know a lot less about it than we think we do. And many things about the South that seem to make no sense are less confounding in context. The reality is the history of many Southern things has been manipulated, hidden, or just plain ignored. Trae Crowder guides us through the pride points, failures, and contradictions in “Southin’ Off.”
Florida DOE releases list of books banned from schools in 2022
The people pushing these bans to remove any LGBTQIA representation from schools and libraries are a very small vocal minority using the laws that DeathSantis along with his fellow fundamentalist Christian ideological bigots implemented just for this purpose. This is what the republicans wanted. I get so tired of repeating my self, but this small minority wants to rule over the majority, return society to 1950 basically wiping any LGBTQIA from society or public view. Please remember these books are not intended nor available to younger kids, these are for teenagers, 13 and up. In one case it says for 17 and up. I have news for everyone, 13 years are ready to read these books and may desperately need to read them. Plus most kids that old have free access to internet or a friend that has it, and studies show that by 13 kids have watched and viewed porn along with nude human pictures. Here is an example of two people, yes just two people pushing their idea of moral values on everyone else, regardless of the wishes of the other people. This is fundamental Christian Taliban in action. Hugs
School district officials responded to more than 1,200 book objections.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — According to a list released by Florida’s Department of Education, school districts across the state issued a combined total of 386 book bans after receiving a total of 1,218 objections in 2022.
A small movement
According to a recent analysis by the Tampa Bay Times, more than half of the objections were raised by the same two people: Bruce Friedman, the founder of the Florida chapter of the activist group No Left Turn in Education, and Vicki Baggett.
He reportedly got titles from an internet database and photocopied thousands of objections with vague complaints like “Protect Children!” and “Damaged Souls!”.
Baggett submitted hundreds of complaints of “indoctrination” and apparently copied from book reviews on BookLooks.org, a book challenging group founded by a member of Moms for Liberty, the Times found.
And of the 386 book bans issued last year, 300 of them covered only three school districts: Clay County where Friedman lives (177 books banned), Martin County (98) and Manatee County (25). There are 67 school districts in Florida altogether. Fifty-one of those districts (including Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, and Citrus counties) did not remove a single book from school shelves in 2022.
5 controversial titles
The titles that were removed from schools often varied by school district despite the fact that efforts to get specific titles banned made national headlines. Such was the case with “And Tango Makes Three,” “Let’s Talk About It” and “This Book is Gay” (which was also the only title Hillsborough County schools banned last year).
Even so, the controversy around some titles reached far enough to get them removed from multiple counties:
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas – The popular series of adult fantasy novels about a young woman who is taken to a faerie kingdom at war was a New York Times Bestseller. The books are intended for adults 17 or older as they contain sex scenes and abusive relationships. However, it is unclear whether school libraries even carried these books in the first place.
- Lucky by Alice Sebold – The memoir written by the author of the book “The Lovely Bones” detailed her rape and brutal assault and how surviving it shaped the rest of her life. The memoir generated attention in Florida after Friedman objected to the book’s graphic descriptions of sexual assault at a school board meeting in November. The board cut his mic before he could read a passage from it.
- L8r, G8r by Lauren Myracle – The third book in Myracle’s famous “Internet Girls” series, which told coming-of-age stories for young girls written entirely in internet-speak and instant messages, was removed from multiple schools for its use of profanity and its depictions of adult sexuality as part of its plot.
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews – A novel about a socially awkward high school senior who, along with his friend and fellow amateur filmmaker, befriends a classmate who is dying of leukemia. Though the novel was well-received, schools have banned it due to complaints about sexually explicit content.
- The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur – Canadian poet Kaur’s second book of poetry was the follow-up to “Milk and Honey,” which became one of the most widely banned books in the U.S. due to its explorations of difficult subjects like sexual assault, trauma, abuse and family issues. Her second collection, which featured more poems touching on abuse, healing from trauma, infanticide and other touchy subjects, was pulled from schools due largely to the controversy “Milk and Honey” generated.
https://x.com/PENamerica/status/1702064681400103374?s=20
In the upside-down, through-the-looking-glass world that is DeSantis’s Florida, what should be condemned as an abomination is touted as an accomplishment.
And to think when I was a teen growing up in Houston I read ‘The Chants of Maldoror’ which I checked out at the public library. People didn’t make a fuss about books back then. Once in a while my mom would read a Truman Capote book and make a face. I think most parents were just pleased that their kids read anything.
Two. Fucking. People.
There’s no liberty in those clowns who were whining for religious liberty. They’re just despicable.
They don’t want liberty, they want total enforced hegemony.
They banned Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer”. That book is a Pulitzer Prize winning classic…and I doubt any single one of these philistine chucklefucks even know what it’s about.
(It’s about antisemitism in Tsarist Russia, by the way.)
You think DeSantis wants kids reading about how antisemitism is bad?
Of course they banned Handmaid’s Tale.
Manatee County is listed as having banned Raina Telgemeir’s innocuous graphic novel Drama BECAUSE OF THIS PAGE.
HE SAID GAY1!1!!
And is happy about it. Can’t have that!
Two individuals people dictating what a state may read. Florida is fucked
Banning books is fascism. There’s no question in my mind. Florida is becoming a fascist state.
Becoming? It is!
I didn’t read ‘Flowers for Algernon’ until I was grown up but I found it very thought-provoking –
Oh, I see the problem there.
Last week in Dallas it was 110 degrees. Today/tomorrow in Florida it is 451.
The temperature paper bursts into flame
It’s disgusting that 2 people can hold so much power over the parents of children that just want to go to school to learn REGULAR educational cirriculum, and not be dictated to by Christofasicst Theocratic wanna be’s that are determined to take this country back 150 years!
Same disgust that one senator can basically bring the armed forced to a halt.
Judy Blume asks everyone to Unite Against Book Bans
If anyone has become legendary due to the hatred of moral busybodies, it’s definitely her. She’s not only one of the pioneers of realistic YA fiction, she’s also one of the most widely banned.
It’s all about sex education, gays, trans, and other LGBTQ+ types being people and finding love and acceptance throughout the pages. Stuff Christofacists hate, yet they do anyway as they target boys and girls for sex both off and online.
So Florida is hostage to two cranks. I’m a bit surprised that De Spotic didn’t assign this power to himself or his immediate cronies, and not some upstarts.
Is the christian bible on that list? Because that book offends the fuck out of me.
Right, because book-banning, like prohibition, always works out so well. Usually they have the opposite effect.
More Florida Christian Nazis doing more Nazi-ing and saying ‘What Nazis? We’re not doing these things we’re so loudly doing!”
