Conservative-dominated court restores books denounced by officials as ‘pornographic filth’ to school libraries
An appellate court has ruled that Texas cannot ban books from libraries simply because they mention “butt and fart” and other content which some state officials may dislike.
The fifth US circuit court of appeals issued its decision on Thursday in a 76-page majority opinion, which was written by Judge Jacques Wiener Jr and opened with a quote from American poet Walt Whitman: “The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.”
In its decision, the appellate court declared that “government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree”.
I think it says something that one of the books they were trying to ban was Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.
If you look at the books that were banned and take out all the humorous ones about butts and farts, you’re left almost exclusively with books about past conservative atrocities and books about current targets of conservative bigotry.
The people who want to ban these books were too bigoted for the 5th Circuit. They’ll probably try to close the whole library next.