Conservative-dominated court restores books denounced by officials as ‘pornographic filth’ to school libraries

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”.

    • @ameancow
      16•6 months ago

      These are the same people who tried to get Mr Rogers taken off the air and tried to shut down PBS entirely.

      I think the average city-American doesn’t fully appreciate how backwards most of our country really is. As someone who grew up in the rural outskirts I can tell stories of the people and communities and attitudes that would probably be shocking to many people, but there are so many people like this that they have significant power over our land. We have to be a lot better about enforcing education in our country, we need to bring the morons back up out of the dark-ages, because there are a fucking LOT of dark-age imbeciles across the US shaping policy for all of us and most of the time they run unchallenged because everyone just fixates on presidential elections every four years and nothing else.

      • @[email protected]
        3•6 months ago

        Sadly they slowly dismantle public education at every turn. I’d be curious to see the uptick in the past 40 years of homeschooling, particularly those doing so for religious reasons.

        • TurtleJoe
          1•6 months ago

          It’s not the last 40 years, it’s been since Civil Rights legislation and the Brown vs Board decision.