Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is already beginning to implement the law.
A city in Tennessee is using a recently passed ordinance essentially prohibiting homosexuality in public to try to ban library books that might violate the new rules.
Murfreesboro passed an ordinance in June banning “indecent behavior,” including “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct.” As journalist Erin Reed first reported, this ordinance specifically mentions Section 21-72 of the city code. The city code states that sexual conduct includes homosexuality.
Anyone who violates the new ordinance is barred from hosting public events or selling goods and services at public events for two years. Anyone who violates the ordinance “in the presence of minors” is barred for five years.
An ACLU-backed challenge to the ordinance has already been launched, but that hasn’t stopped city officials from implementing the measure. Last Monday, the Rutherford County steering committee met to discuss removing all books that might potentially violate the ordinance from the public library. The resolution was met with widespread outcry from city residents.
“When have the people who ban books ever been the good guys?” local activist Keri Lambert demanded during the Monday county meeting.
Murfreesboro city officials have already used the ordinance to ban four books that discuss LGBTQ themes. In August, the county library board pulled the books Flamer, Let’s Talk About It, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made, and This Book Is Gay.
The board also implemented a new library card system that categorizes books into certain age groups. When it takes effect next year, children and teenagers will only be able to check out books that correspond to their age group; they will need permission from a parent or guardian to check out “adult” books.
Library director Rita Shacklett worried in August that the new rules would prevent students from accessing books they need for a class. She explained that many classic high school books, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, are now classified as “adult.”
It’s unclear if the county steering committee plans to pull books such as the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which includes multiple depictions of heterosexual sexual conduct.
Murfreesboro’s new ordinance is part of a much larger wave of attacks on LGBTQ rights in Tennessee and the rest of the country. In the past year, the so-called Volunteer State became the first state to try to ban drag performances. That law was overturned in court.
In March, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow people to refuse to perform a marriage if they disagree with it, essentially gutting marriage equality. The bill was introduced in the Senate but deferred until next year.
link: https://newrepublic.com/post/176915/tennessee-town-ban-public-homosexuality
archive link: https://archive.ph/LFMMK
Will the bible be in the adult section? It’s full of every kind of smut and crime you can think of.
it should be at the top of the ‘banned’ list for content.
Nah, it just needs to be in fiction where it and the quran belong.
At least until people stop treating it like truth and start treating it strictly anthropologically. It’s a fascinating book to analyze secularly.
Is it though? I’ve seen atheists say this to theists to make them feel like they got some kind of win or something.
But let’s be real, it’s shit. The stories are shit. The characters are shit. It isn’t even internally consistent. It’s an objectively shitty book.
No, it’s fascinating to ANALYZE secularly, not to read secularly. It’s fascinaing anthropologically. It is NOT good literature.
I’m not going to call cave paintings high art, but they are fascinating to study for some.
The Song of Solomon was deadass my first exposure to erotic writing
“And their emissions were kin to that of donkeys” or some shit
That’s in Ezekiel (23:20), not Song of Songs.
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Song of Songs 4:5
Is this what you’re referencing?
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That was already the raunchiest part I could find.
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But the Bible explicitly condemns most of these things (except the God-ordained genocide in the Pentateuch I guess). It’s a bit of an oversimplification to compare that to books that explicitly condone and encourage sexually deviant behavior.
Violence is already banned by law, we should ban all the books about that too, right?
I would have no problem with making those age restricted, if that’s what you mean (after the all, the city is only banning the distribution of these materials to minors). We already do that with violent movies, after all.
And kicking anyone who shows affection to their same-gender partner in public out of the city. You left that part out for some reason.
Read the article. The law is not limited to homosexual displays.
I see, so as long as it isn’t limited to homosexuality, it doesn’t say that gay people will get kicked out of town if they kiss each other in public. Gotcha.
Again, read the article.
They don’t kick you out of town. They just ban you from hosting public events or selling goods and services at public events. You’re acting like they’re planning to send gay people to the camps.
Nothing says “freedom loving patriot” like *checks notes* disallowing people from participating in society because they were born a certain way.
How can you even form a coherent thought up there through that massive cloud of cognitive dissonance? I guess it’s like a muscle, and if you work it out enough, even the most extreme dissonance can be brushed off.
Kind of interesting to watch.
Where does it say that is what “barred for five years” means? Or is that just your personal interpretation?
So if a man and woman are holding hands, they’ll get the same punishment? Somehow I don’t think this backwater town will enforce the laws equally since they have such a dumb ordinance to begin with.
Interestingly he refused to answer this one
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Ezekiel 23:20
Looks like smut that should be kept out of the hands of children to me.
Ezekiel 23:22-27
What’s your point? Does putting smut in context make it any less smutty and appropriate for children? It’s okay for children to hear about men blasting out semen with their giant dicks if it’s in the proper context?
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Are you saying there is no difference at all between a book that praises and encourages such things and one that reprimands it?
If I had a book that showed graphic pictures of people having sex with “do not do this, children” at the bottom, would that be appropriate for children?
Are there graphic pictures of sexual behavior in any Bibles? We’re talking about a single verse in a 1000+ page book. Assuming any child would even read that far is quite a stretch.
I see, so giant donkey dicks spewing out cum is not unacceptable for children as long as there isn’t a picture of it and it’s a long book. Well, a lot of those books being made unaccessible to children are long books with far less graphic depictions of anything sexual, so you should be against them making them adult only.
You should take a look at the types of books these people are banning, because if you think they’re all books with graphics pictures of “sexual behavior,” you are very mistaken.
If you were to actually do some research into what is actually being banned, it becomes clear pretty quickly what this is about. And it’s not “graphic pictures of sexual behavior.”
How about a third option: one that mentions it at all. Isn’t that what this is all about after all?
According to Republicans, this is about not exposing children to things like that. You can’t change the criteria for this one book, especially when that book is a religious holy book. That would violate the First Amendment by creating laws that specifically and overtly target anything based on religion.
Additionally, it’s fucking stupid.
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yes, that’s the point of the whole book.
technically still falls under the law tho
There is no explicit depiction of sexual activity in the Bible. Ezekiel 23:20 is probably the most lewd verse in the entire Bible, and it is roundly condemned as sinful and inappropriate in the following verses.
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According to the majority. You DO support democracy, don’t you? Or would you be more comfortable with a dictatorship that forces everyone to be gay?
I didn’t pass that law, the city of Murfreesboro did. BTW we also have laws against stealing and killing people, should we get rid of those too because they limit people’s freedoms in choosing how they live their lives?
In this post you claim the law is an opposition to a “dictatorship that forces everyone to be gay”. Then you make a false dichotomy that claims that crimes with victims who lose life and property is equal to two dudes with the hots for each other.
You lying fascist shitbag.
No, I asked whether YOU would feel more comfortable under such a dictatorship.
Also I don’t care what two dudes with the hots for each other do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, but when it’s in public and especially in front of children, it is potentially no longer a victimless crime.
Believe it or not, there are other people in the world. It’s unrealistic and downright narcissistic to expect that everyone should accommodate your desires everywhere and at all times.
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Believe it or not, there are other people in the world. It’s unrealistic and downright narcissistic to expect that everyone should accommodate your ideology everywhere and at all times. Statism is bad, mmkay
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Not in Murfreesboro, TN.
That’s because you are fascists who hate freedom, America, individual liberty, and free will. It’s not complicated. You are in fact the ones suffering from deviant behavior. You’re the ultimate Statists: authoritarians who literally want to control the actual corporial bodies of individuals for no reason at all other then to make yourselves feel superior. Sheer, unbridled statism.
If people had the ability to control their own bodies, we wouldn’t need a state. Unfortunately there’s people like you who think it’s okay to do gay stuff with or in front of children, and refuse to be reasoned out of it.
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Why would you worship a genocidal maniac?
I don’t.
K
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These books (I looked them up) explicitly tell people how to have gay sex. They also claim it’s healthy and natural. The Bible doesn’t. Yes, gay sex is mentioned (albeit in a very roundabout way) and there is one verse mentioning giant dicks shooting loads like horses, but the context is very different. Do you see the difference?
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Very convincing argument. You’ve totally changed my mind.
Not.
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Yeah, I can see how that’s totally unlike LGBT folx who also insist that what they do is for the benefit of the children.
It IS for the benefit of the teens who are struggling with their sexual feelings because psychopathic fascist shitheads like you think it’s okay to beat the shit out of them and drive them to suicide just for their feelings. Lots and lots of “children’s” 🙄 deaths are on your hands and the hands of those who push fascist rewrites of “common sense” laws.
But you wouldnt understand that because you’re a psychopath. And probably an incel at that, based on how you have presented so far.