And then they came for the bookstores. As usual, Texas Republicans lead the way in oppression and ignorance.
A bill has been introduced to the Texas Legislature that could result in bookstores facing fines and legal costs if they place material deemed “obscene” within access of a minor.
House Bill 1375 was proposed by state Representative Nate Schatzline, a Republican, who said it is needed to keep “harmful material” away from children. Critics argue it would force bookshops to self-censor or risk potentially devastating lawsuits.
In recent years, a number of Republican-controlled states have passed laws banning school libraries from holding certain books that they regard as inappropriate.
The Texas Legislature in 2023 passed a bill forbidding school libraries from having any book among its stacks that “describes or portrays sexual conduct” in a “patently offensive way” that are not required by the curriculum.
PEN America recorded 3,362 instances of what it classified as book bans across the U.S. in the 2022-23 academic year, a 33 percent rise from the previous year.
House Bill 1375 would make commercial enterprises, such as bookstores, liable for “damages arising from the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor.”
This would include when such material is “readily accessible to minors” or “includes a minor’s visual image, audio voice, or participation in any manner.”
Any business found to have broken this law could have to pay damages and would be liable for associated court costs and legal fees.
The library in my town has a vast collection of paperback cowboy and romance novels. We have a bookstore of sorts that specializes in gaming, D&D, and comic books. Can I deem those as “patently offensive”? Those romance novels feature a lot of heaving bosoms and passionate kisses, definitely a portrayal of “sexual conduct”. Can we shut them all down? (Don’t laugh, I’ve heard that one of our city council members actually wants to close the library).
When I was a kid in the 1970s in Washington state, my local library had copies of Playboy and Playgirl openly displayed in the periodicals section, and they had a good collection of underground comics — it’s where I read R. Crumb. I read them there, for the articles, you know, and look how I turned out. And then look at Ted Cruz. Do you really want to be like Texas?
And these are the kind of people who would think a book merely having a pair of gay or lesbian characters shown on the cover is “harmful material,” no matter what the content of the book is.
I’d go farther and say these people believe merely existing is harmful sexual conduct for anyone who isn’t cis or heterosexual. Didn’t J.K. Rowling say something about asexuality being indecent and invasive a couple months back?
They do love the :”poorly educated”” a s Trump proudly boasted and want to make sure there’s as many as poorly educated as they can possibly make it.
Libraries, learning, critical thinking. That’s not for them and especially NOT for those they seek to control and have as voters and supporters and cash cows.
Start by removing the Bible and then wait for the howls…
@2. Recursive Rabbit : I hadn’t heard about that.. Googles :
Source : https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/04/07/jk-rowling-criticised-for-comments-about-asexuality/
Everyone read Playboy for the articles.
Mysteriously some of the pages of the pictorials got stuck together but nobody knows how. It was weird.
Among the other problems with this bill, is that there is no definition of…”harmful material to a minor.”
There is no way to determine what is harmful material to a minor.
I would definitely put the Texas Republican party in the category of harmful to minors. This could easily be backed up by a lot of data.
To just mention the latest Texas atrocity against minors, the current measles outbreak started in Texas among antivaxxers, and already, two of their children have died from the disease.
The Texas fundie xian churches have high rates of sexual abuse directed against children and are clearly harmful to minors.
The authors of this bill are also clearly harmful to minors.
To be fair, the Texas GOP is an equal opportunity abuser when it comes to people. They are also harmful to adults.
I have a terrible temptation to get second copies of Portnoy’s Complaint and donate them to a religious charity shop. Waste of funny books.
I have a terrible temptation to get second copies of Portnoy’s Complaint and donate them to a religious charity shop. Waste of funny books.
Plus :
Source : https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/j-k-rowling-cruelly-mocks-asexual-people-for-no-reason/
Can see some other results indicating that, yes, JK has attacked asexual people as well as Trans people but not the exact quotes mentioned by Recursive Rabbit – which is probly the fault of my poor google-fu rather than her not saying it.
second posting accidental. Sorry!
I would seriously love it if someone started setting a standard for this crap that involved, “Actual, provable, real, non-imaginary, and, not in some bullshit made up study, nor which, if a real study, you either misunderstood, misread, or intentionally lie about, as flipping evidence of harm, instead of just, ‘I, or my religion, says it must be bad, even though other members of the supposed same religion disagree’.”, before being allowed to pass f-ing laws about protecting someone. And, of course, its these same idiots that want to deregulate everything, including environmental poisoning, despite clear, absolute, and certain evidence of harm, because its a) not in the Bible (or you can’t twist it into being in there somehow), b) it definitely harms kids, buts, again, not “morally”, and c) there is actual, real, evidence its harmful.
And, if this had “ever” been the sane criteria then RFK wouldn’t be in office either, so even bigger bonus. Seriously though, this is yet another one of the catch-22 things – we have no religious test for office, except when we do, just not “technically”, but we also don’t want to prevent just anyone from voting, and this translated somehow into, “Even an idiot can run for office too.”, and, as always, the bigots, lunatics, conspiracy theorists, and theologians all went, “Super!!! So, we literally don’t have to know shit about anything and be put in charge of it!” Argh!!!
Among the other problems with this bill is the lack of thought they’ve put into it.
Where do kids get their information these days any way?
I’m sure libraries and bookstores are one source.
But probably not the main source.
Since the internet and Smart phones were invented 30 years ago, just about everyone gets a lot or most of their information from electronic devices.
Even if they passed this stupid bill, they aren’t going to be able to control what minors see and learn about the real world.
They keep trying to censor the internet anyway but it never works.
@6. Silentbob : Not quite everybody.
Most hardbacks could cause serious harm to a minor if dropped on them from sufficient height.
Of course, the same people who are trying to do this are also trying to roll back or eliminate age-of-consent laws so that a 50 year old man can marry a 13 year old girl. But it’s LGBT+ people who are the groomers.
wonder what will happen to the photography sections…
Near Houston we have one bookstore at the mall: Barnes and Noble. I haven’t been there in a decade. My favorite section was labeled “Religious Fiction.” When I got the opportunity I would re-shelve a Behe or Wells book there.
Ironically, most of the “good stuff” isn’t found in bookstores but in grocery stores! Cosmopolitan boasting how to “Drive Your Trophy Wife into Ecstasy!”
Doc Bill: I remember seeing the headline “UNTAMED VAJAYJAYS!!!” on a women’s magazine on a display-shelf next to the checkout line in a Safeway — in roughly the same place where they stock tabloids (most of which explicitly support Trump BTW). That headline was near the top of the cover, right next to the face of a woman who may or may not have had anything to do with the article (assuming there even was an article associated with that headline, I didn’t check).
Way before my time so I first came across it in a short story collection owned by my very Catholic grandmother(!), but “Welcome to the Monkey House”‘ first published in Playboy. It’s a twisted, elaborate rape fantasy but it’s also a vicious satire of state repression that introduced me to Vonnegut.
So I would have to conclude that the literary education I got from Playboy is at least as good as the one I got through theology class via exposure to the Bible and all its derived fanfiction and commentary. 🙂
@13 raven may claim that censoring the internet doesn’t work, but it works most of the time for most people. For a Texas politician’s purpose a comprehensive, imperfect form of literary censorship combined with imperfect internet censorship is more than adequate to snuff out any pesky intellectual movements.
Support the Internet Archive.
Among the other problems with this bill, is that there is no definition of…”harmful material to a minor.”
Has anyone ever demonstrated ACTUAL HARM to minors caused by any of these allegedly harmful publications?
…Rowling doubled down on her views, writing, “At this point, it’s quicker to list who isn’t under the queer umbrella than who is,” and “I want an International Bored Of This Shit day.”
I think it’s time to consign JK Rowling to the Has-Been-Bin. It’s starting to look like she’s not working on anything and has nothing better to do than troll about for attention and engagement.
“Harmful material to a minor” is any material that is not Biblical and church approved. I had a youth pastor tell a group of us teens…circa 1966/67…that if we should only listen to gospel music on the radio. If we couldn’t, then we should turn off the radio. I’m confident he felt the same way about books, magazines, movies, theater and TV shows. There was a bit of shock among the teens as we had never heard anything like that, and almost everyone was into the Beatles, or the Monkees That degree of evangelicalism wasn’t deeply rooted in the Southern Baptist church, yet. Everyone of us had grown up listening to pop music at home and on the school bus.
Judith Levine’s Harmful to Minors, a book that warned of the perils caused by the preoccupation of protecting kids from “harmful material” and published over 20 years ago, seems prescient here.
Look how Dr. Myers “turned out.” He read R. Crumb, which Texas wants to ban, and anyone who reads or has read R. Crumb is suspicious. You may now consider yourself under arrest in Texas, professor.
weylguy @ #25 — Look how R. Crumb turned out…he’s been living in France since 1991. Sounds like a good move to me.
So when will they take a leaf out of the anti-abortion laws and ban interstate travel to go to a library or bookstore? As for the problem of Ted Cruz, they could simply ban travel to Cancun
Living in castles rots ones brain and compassion. Explains why we don’t want kings and JKR.
A couple things opened my eyes here:
R.Crumb – never heard of him until today; can’t wait until a rainy day when I can go down this rabbit hole :)
JKR is just another profoundly out-of-touch, public-facing-sex-bigot and that is about it. I didn’t bother to ever read her social media trash in the past. This is…such shit… and the hubris too: “Happy International Fake Oppression Day to everyone who wants complete strangers to know they don’t fancy a shag”
Who is generally uncomfortable around with people who don’t want to have sex with them? Another way: “I am generally uncomfortable with people that don’t want to fuck a single person in a large group of random people”
This is a toddler shit.
Re Rowling: I remember what a big sensation it caused when she said, “Dumbledore is gay.” It’s hard to believe the same person is now making all these queerphobic remarks. What’s gotten into her?
Steve Morrison
An RFK style brainworm?
I always feel sorry for the brainworm.
No one should have to live in RFK Jr.’s head.
Why not?
[OT]
gigawatts, from last week.
Feast your eyes.
“Happy International Fake Oppression Day to everyone who wants complete strangers to know they don’t fancy a shag.”
To which I might reply: ” “Happy International Fake Persecution Day to everyone who wants to scream stupid shit to complete strangers about complete strangers’ private lives.”
“I want an International Bored Of This Shit day.”
Okay — just rename it “International I Can Pay Attention To Something Else Day,” and, you know, take that as a hint from yourself?
And as for “What’s gotten into her?” I’m guessing a more non-literal brain-worm known as “audience capture.” She said some stupid things about trans people, and suddenly she got a huge infusion of reinforcement/reward from a whole new fan-base; and she and that new fan-base have been reinforcing each other in an unbroken feedback-loop ever since.
I’m pretty sure Rowling’s always been transphobic. It just went from “I don’t like trans people” to “trans people are literally the devil” and has consumed her whole life to the point where even Elongated Muskrat told her she should touch grass.
I suspect that mold spores from that castle she lives in may have contributed something.
The bible features sex and violence and a long sadomasochistic suicide/snuff scene. It is undeniable that many young catholics were sexualized by the stations of the cross, the parish priest, oddly muscular sixpack jesus with bloody wounds (poor guy paniced and kept screaming his safeword in aramaic instead of latin). I liked the whole bit about that pimp Lot.
I used to go around filing takedowns on crucifixes as sadomasochistic abuse/suicide content that needed to be flagged 18+. Hm. Now that ChatGPT writes a good legal letter it would be fun to send falsified compliance demands from the DoJ, because they’re too busy to do it themselves. Just, you know, pitch in. Churches need to cover deadjesus and stop serving jesusblood or they need an 18+ sign by the door.
No one should have to live in RFK Jr.’s head.
(Handwringing) won’t someone think of the poor homeless brain-worms?
Someone should take this opportunity to Sue any bookstore stocking the bible or the koran etc. Few books could be more harmful than those.
I think at about this point the probability of her twitting/Xitting “kinder, kuche, kirche” is approaching one.
Hey, I still have a copy of that National Lampoon book!
If it’ll help, I can share my story of how reading the bible led me down the road to atheism. That oughta’ convince people that it’s harmful to minors.
One often overlooked aspect of the xtian terrorist magats banning books and war on education is that they are pushing this death spiral country to be as ignorant and illiterate as they are!
@38 Marcus Ranum is absolutely correct about the bible. It is, in so many ways, an obscene, self-contradictory work of bizarre fiction. I don’t support banning books. But, if they are going to ban one, it should be the bible !
And, he pointed out how disgusting a religion is when their main symbol is of a fictitious dead person that was left on an ancient torture device.
PZ, why are you surprised? Remember, texass is the lone star state. And, that one star is their rating on the decency scale of one to five stars!
(I feel bad about that because I know a few very decent people and businesses there)
how disgusting a religion is when their main symbol is of a fictitious dead person that was left on an ancient torture device.
As Sam Kinison pointed out, the last thing jesus is going to want to see, if he comes back, is a cross. And the stupid christians put them everywhere. It’d be like wearing an AR-15 pin around people whose kids had just been blown to bits with one; surely nobody would be that disgustingly cruel, right?
Ron DeSantis, banner of books…
(Crossposted with the infinite thread)
The Guardian:
Ron DeSantis’s fall from grace: ‘He’s completely crashed to the ground’
.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/20/ron-desantis-florida-governor-fall
Rot, and be forgotten!
BWAHAHAHAHA!
@41. Oops, I meant to say “the probability of JK Rowling twitting/Xitting “kinder, kuche, kirche” is approaching one.”
Marcus Ranum @ # 47: As Sam Kinison pointed out, the last thing jesus is going to want to see, if he comes back, is a cross.
If so, shame on him: Lenny Bruce said it first (with a riff on JFK not coming back if his fans wore Carcano Model 38 rifle replicas around their necks).
@ 18. Doc Bill : “My favorite section was labeled “Religious Fiction.” When I got the opportunity I would re-shelve a Behe or Wells book there.”
Wells? I mean he was a Victorian/ Edwardian era man of hs time and all but I’m not sure what you’ve got against H.G. of War of the Worlds* / Time Traveller / Invisible Man, etc.. fame?
I guess The Island of Dr Moreau counts in that category but still..
.* Which actually was asking what if Martians came and treated Europeans as Europeans treated Indfigenous peoples around the world inspired by how the British empire treated the Tasmanian First Peoples so perhaps he was a bit ahead of his time there really..
“Wells” is very common name, and more that one author has that common name. The only “Wells” who pairs with “Behe” is . . . Jonathan Wells, whose books and other writings PZ regularly dissected in the early years of this very blog.
Jonathan Wells is recently deceased, and PZ offered a dyslogy at the time:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/10/02/jonathan-wells-is-dead/
. . . and, uh, you yourself commented on that very thread.