Llano County, Texas commissioners are debating shutting down the county’s public library after a court ordered books the commissioners voted to ban returned to circulation. The books included children’s books like Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents”; “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; the graphic novel “Spinning” by Tillie Walden; and three books from Dawn McMillan’s “I Need a New Butt!” series, per NBC News.
Commissioners said the books were inappropriate for children, along with Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen”; Robie H. Harris’ “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health”; and four other children’s picture books with “silly themes and rhymes,” like “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.”
The commissioners claimed they were ridding the library of “pornography;” one of the children’s books include a drawing of a child’s rear end. And while the KKK is generally disgusting, its history falls far short of full-frontal. Plaintiffs in the case successfully argued the decision of the county commission violated First Amendment rights and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.
The county commissioners called an emergency meeting for Thursday to decide the fate of the library’s three branches serving the county of 21,000 people. A pro-book advocate circulated an email sent by a censorship advocate to anti-intellectual supporters saying county head Judge Ron Cunningham has said, if we lose the injunction, he will CLOSE the library because he WILL NOT put the porn back in the kid’s section!”