Today in predictable petard hoistings:

Look, I don't want to tell the narrow-minded, rabid-foam conservatives trying to foist their worldview on the rest of us through book banning and anti-drag laws how to fascist, but I mean, they should have seen this coming, right?

Pictured: a sixteenth century soldier about
to be hoisted by his own petard.

So books. Basically any book.

Seen what coming? Why the 2022 law passed in Utah that allows any parent to demand a book be considered for removal from schools for containing the flexibly broad "pornographic or indecent" material, to come back and bite them in the Leviticus. Obviously, the intent behind the law was to give entitled Bible-thumpers the ability to filter out anything that doesn't support their personal worldview under the cover of indecency, so books that include queer themes or address racism. 

"Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

-God, evidently

The part they didn't see coming is how TV-MA the Bible is: The first people you meet are completely naked and one of their kids commits fratricide. Then there's murder, mass-murder, infanticide, global genocide, all committed by God himself. He actually kills a mother of four for looking at back at a city. An entire city he just destroyed. And don't even get me started on Job. Ever see Saw? Well, it's got nothing on the Bible. And that's just the Old Testament. In the New Testament, a guy gets crucified for suggesting that people be kind to poor people. 

"It requires six years of schooling and a Master's
Degree. But please, feel free to weigh in." 

-Librarians

And I'm not suggesting that the Bible or Christians (at least not all of them) endorse any of this anti-social behavior, but there is an element of where do they get off banning Boy Meets Boy by David Leviathan? All this to say, what if we trusted librarians and educators to, you know, educate? Is it crazy to suggest that maybe parents don't always know what's best for kids? I know it's a thorny issue, but surely we can all agree that the sheer fact that someone has a kid doesn't qualify them to make decisions for other people's families, right? 

Anyway because this is Utah, the next book up for banning is the Bible's sequel the Book of Mormon which I'm far less familiar with, but I understand also contains a fair amount of violence and it says some pretty racist things about Black and Indigenous people. And you know, one can't help but wonder how carefully these folks have even read the books they not only claim to base their life around, but also insist we live our lives around as well.

"Oh, you have read it? Well Joanne, then maybe you can show me
the part where it condemns abortion. No? Yeah, I thought not."

-Jesus, getting surprisingly sarcastic