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”.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    And these old farts are complaining about how “soft” today’s youth are? They really need to get their heads out of their butts.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      To be fair, he didn’t have to make it that long.

      On the other hand, we wouldn’t have gotten this:

      • Seven “butt and fart” books, with titles like I Broke My Butt! and Larry the Farting Leprechaun;

    • subignition@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      for extra effect, I recommend reading through the opinion first before imagining. The high quality of the writing really accentuates the ludicrous degree of clown shit on display from the GOP.

    • vortic@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The primary opinion is only 27 pages. The rest is a three page concurrence a 46 page dissent by Duncan.

  • vortic@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    The Bible describes God showing Moses his ‘backside’, which a number of actual scholars interpret as including his butt.

    Not sure about farts in the Bible, but there’s stories about rape, incest, at one point a description of men with ‘emission like donkeys’, ie, huge cum loads from big dicks.

    They seem to never learn that if you try to ban ‘pornographic’ text, you’ll have to ban the Bible as well.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Nuh uh. I swored on the bi-bull three times. That ain’t in there. I never heard my preacher say that and all he ever talked about was the bi-bull.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Kids fucking live for fart and butt jokes. I’ve never seen a group of children giggle harder than when I watched a teacher read “I Need a New Butt.”

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          My older kids went through a phase where they were just randomly saying “butt” for like a year. By the end of it I couldn’t stand my own ass.

          “Hey dad, dad, DAD!”

          “What is it kiddo?”

          “Butts! Ahahahahaha. Just picture it, crack down the middle, poopin’, just hanging out being a butt.”

          When I realized I hadn’t heard the word “butt” for a few months, my sigh of relief could have changed the orbit of the planet.

  • Aganim@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Imagine being all worked up about books mentioning raging obscenities like ‘butt’ and ‘fart’, only to get slapped in the face by Judge ‘Wiener’. 😂

    • JonEFive@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      Imagine having that much of an issue with barely offensive words that their kids will never read because most don’t use the school library anyway.

      And imagine letting your kids come home and access whatever media they want including actual pornography on the internet. Most of these parents have zero clue how to block internet sites on their home computers and laptops let alone the phones that their kids all have.

      But of course, that’s another problem some parents are asking the government to solve by forcing porn sites to require visitors to affirmatively identify themselves and their age. Of course, that only applies to the major porn sites that play by the arbitrary rules anyway. All so stupid.

  • TooManyFoods@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The desenting opinion called the court the “library police” for refusing to let the state police the library.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Good_morning@lemmynsfw.com
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        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.

  • PoopDelivery
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    6 months ago

    Good. Fuck Butt Fart Texas. Books should not be censored for words. I remember a teacher in maybe 7th grade reading a book outloud with the word fuck in it, and he just said it and kept reading, he.knew the book well. I gained a lot of respect for that teacher and listened to him because I felt like he wasn’t going to censor what he taught us.

    • JonEFive@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      Good teacher. Authors choose their words intentionally. I’m guessing “fudging”, “friggen”, and “ducking” (thanks iPhone) are not great replacements for the subject matter.

  • Silverseren@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    Apparently terms that anyone over 12 years old doesn’t find funny anymore count as “adult”.

    Is this conservatives admitting that they are all just immature children?

  • rebelsimile
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    6 months ago

    And in 5 years they’ll all be wearing “Make Butt Fart Again” hats.

  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Unfortunately, we know how this is going to go: “If you won’t let us ban books from the library, we’ll just ban the library.”

    • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      Already happening in some places. Local governments are cutting library funding because they don’t like the some of the content that their libraries are stocking, but the courts won’t let them ban it all.

      • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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        6 months ago

        Time to open private non-profit libraries, offer classes on social tolerance and apply for public grants?