The Lunatics Banning Books in Texas Have Reached a New Low

There is the brink of insanity, and then there is the abyss…

Every time I think I’ve run out of things to rant about, some elected official in my state proves me wrong. In one of the most extreme cases of someone taking their ball and going home when the game doesn’t go their way I’ve ever seen, the county commissioners of Llano County, Texas seriously considered closing their library system after a federal judge ordered the county to return 17 banned books to the library shelves while a lawsuit over the banned books proceeds. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed at an executive session on April 13th, and the commissioners voted unanimously to keep the library open while they appeal the court’s decision. They will also return the previously banned books to the library pending the appeal.

It’s a victory for those who still believe in a little thing called the First Amendment, but the fact that the library’s survival depended on County Judge Ron Cunningham (who banned the books in the first place) and the four commissioners actually exhibiting some common sense means this fight is far from over.

At this point in our history, I don’t have to tell you why the books were banned; you can probably guess. Some of the titles include Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris, Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings, and In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. There were also four children’s books banned (because apparently passing gas is a threat to the well-being of the community): Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose, Freddie the Farting Snowman and Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts.

I should say at this point that I have not read any of the above books. I did just read a synopsis of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents; it sounds amazing (it won the Pulitzer Prize) and I will get it the next time I’m at the bookstore (the quickest way to get me to buy a book is to ban it). I also might get a few copies of Freddie the Farting Snowman to give out as Christmas gifts.

Before continuing my rant about the book haters of Llano County (and it seems the community is almost evenly divided over this, so my venom will only be directed at 50% of them), let me give you a few statistics about the state I call home:

• Texas has the fourth-lowest literacy rate in the nation at 81.0%.
• Texas has the fourth-lowest number of libraries at 3.2 per 100,000 residents.
• There are 6,750 public library staff statewide (both certified librarians and non-librarian staff), which is significantly fewer than the 10,489 licensed gun dealers in the state as of 2019.
• Apparently, we need more gun dealers than librarians, given that Texas also has the most registered guns in the nation at 588,696.

Given these numbers, the very last thing we need to be considering is closing libraries for any reason.

Now back to the honorable Judge Cunningham and his order to remove the books in the first place and subsequent threat to close the library entirely. The media has done a fine job of interviewing both supporters and opponents of the ban/closure. According to NBC News, resident Jeff Scoggins told commissioners that they would answer to voters if they “bow to a minority that is pushing to close the libraries.” The same article quoted Eva Carter, who was on the side of those who wanted to close the libraries: “We need to fight it in the court system and get this salacious material removed. We have God on our side, and we expect he will get the glory when this is said and done.”

I’m sure Ms. Carter sincerely believes her position makes her both patriotic and a good Christian. She is, however, sincerely wrong, ignoring both the Bill of Rights and the more salacious passages of the Bible. When you use the phrase “we have God on our side” in connection with banning books, you are neither a patriot nor a Christian; what you are is the Taliban, Texas version.

There is something the media seems to have missed, however, and it’s something that should definitely not be missed. There have been, and will continue to be, repeated battles over what books children are required to read in school. This is a debate that can occur with both sides having valid arguments about things like the age-appropriateness of a book. What’s happening in Llano County is not about “required” reading though, because this isn’t a school library they’re banning books from. It is the public library; if you don’t want to read a book there, no one is going to force you to.

The battle in Llano County isn’t about protecting anyone from “salacious material” (like fart books). It’s about a small, vocal group imposing their worldview on the entire community by removing anything that runs counter to that worldview. Banning books is about people in power holding on to that power in the most desperate way possible. As an example, I give you the works of one Ernest Hemingway, which have been relentlessly attacked from every possible angle for nearly a century.

It started with the Nazis (of course it did); they burned all of his books in the 1933 bonfires because of their “decadence.” In the 1930s and 1940s, Hemingway’s classic The Sun Also Rises was banned in Soviet Russia for being anti-communist; in the 1980s, the same book was banned in a Florida school district for being pro-communist. A Farewell to Arms was once banned by the Italian government because it depicted Italian forces as cowardly during the World War I Battle of Caporetto. For Whom the Bell Tolls was declared “unfit to mail” by the U.S. Postal Service in 1941 because it was seen as pro-communist. And in 1962, a group called “Texans for America” fought the use of textbooks that even mentioned Hemingway. Freakin’ Texas again, damn it.

In every one of these cases, the opposition had nothing to do with the literary merit of the books, and it doesn’t in the Llano County case, either. Bans of this type are always intended solely to protect the narrative of whatever group is in power at the time from a voice they consider dissenting, whether that dissent is real or simply perceived. This is why we must vigilantly stand against book bans and call them what they are: an all-out assault on intellectual freedom. And we must do this even when — especially when — we disagree with the very books and ideas we are protecting. For any “patriot” reading this, that’s what America was always supposed to be about.

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