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From: Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Books Banned in Utah.
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2024 07:45:21 -0000 (UTC)
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On Sat, 10 Aug 2024 08:46:03 -0700, Paul S Person wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Aug 2024 07:55:11 -0000 (UTC), Charles Packer
> <mailbox@cpacker.org> wrote:
> 
>>On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 09:38:20 +1200, Titus G wrote:
>>
>>> Utah has banned 13 books, including Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
>>> which basically claims that large corporations are not to be trusted
>>> with science.
>>> I do not know any of the other authors but Sarah J. Maas writes
>>> Fantasy.
>>> James Nichol will be delighted that women are being recognised with
>>> twelve of the thirteen books being written by women.
>>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/e/
>>2PACX-1vQc_7uakPh4eRXrq0iVq-L2g-BwcnRWyfc7E0QOdrThoUEtPHQaDvJM4JwNFXV-
>>HZQok4L-fDh_P9jt/pubhtml?pli=1
>>
>>Is nobody simply curious as to why different books have different sets
>>of school boards banning them? And how many school districts are there
>>in Utah, anyway? How can we be sure that this isn't a publicity stunt
>>for Sarah J Maas?
> 
> Different school boards have different values. That's the problem with
> "local values" -- they are /local/. Go over the ridge to the next school
> district and the values may differ. Hence the endless attempts to
> elevate /my/ local values to apply /universally/. Well, not mine
> personally, of course; I am indicating the state of mind of the
> individual(s) doing the banning.
> 
> I saw an article recently that claimed that most book banning efforts
> were being done, country-wide, by at most 11 distinct people. I wonder
> how many distinct people were responsible for the thousands of
> voicemails/emails to election workers who had the gall to insist that
> the vote count determined the winner -- one? two? three?.

Subsequently the New York Times ran a story that resolved my
puzzlement over the structure of the list. If at least three
school districts decide to ban a book, all school districts
in the state are required to remove it from their libraries.
I looked up the locations of each of the five districts
appearing in the list and they're all in small towns.
Fun fact: Utah spends the least of any state on its public
schools, on a per pupil basis.