In Which Pete Argues With THE COURTS

In Texas, a sucky court decision made about the suckiest points about library that ever sucked.

Let’s take a look at these suckers and their suck decision.

The Situation

In August 2021, some citizens asked the Llano County library commissioner to remove 17 books from the library. These included some books “about butts and farts,” as well as some of our typical favorites, like The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, because people like to freak out about this one because it’s got a tiny cartoon dick in it that probably seems pretty normal to kids or maybe even just a little giggleworthy. The goddamn thing is over 50 years old, surely by now that kid is taking little blue pills, and we’re still not over it.

Of course, there are the modern classics of book banning as well, including It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health by Robie Harris which is a highly factual book of the “Oh dear god, what in the unholy, Cronenberg-esque hell is happening to meeeeeeeeee!?” genre.

And then there were some…interesting entries.

They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

This is a super-well-researched non-fiction book, using government documents, interviews (including interviews with KKK members), and lots of other hyper-reputable sources to explain to kids/teens what the KKK was about.

All 17 challenged titles were removed.

Then, in June 2024, an appeals court ruled that 8 of the 17 had to be put back. Mostly, the deal seems to have been that books like They Called Themselves the KKK should be on the shelves, while books about farts and butts didn’t necessarily need to be replaced because they were “juvenile,” and a judge said, “I do not find those books were removed on the basis of a dislike for the ideas within them when it has not been shown the books contain any ideas with which to disagree.”

Your Honor, I think we are disagreeing on a critical idea: Farts ARE hilarious. And we could spend a lot of time arguing about frivolity being a stupid reason to ban something, but things are about to get EVEN MORE STUPIDER, so let’s move on.

A good chunk of the books, and probably the ones that were removed for very wrong reasons, were replaced, so it’s a win-ish:

The main opinion was by Judge Jacques Wiener, nominated to the court by former President George H. W. Bush. Wiener said the books were clearly removed at the behest of county officials who disagreed with the books' messages.

"But a book may not be removed for the sole — or a substantial — reason that the decisionmaker does not wish patrons to be able to access the book's viewpoint or message," Wiener wrote.

However, in May of 2025, The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Llano County libraries had the right to remove the books.

Today, let’s go through some of the text from that court decision. Because I don’t think these assholes know what they’re talking about.

If you’d like, you can read it without interruptions here. Really pages 2-5 are all you need.

Selection Versus Removal

First, plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library’s removal of books. Yes, Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one’s right to receive someone else’s speech. But plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books. The First Amendment acknowledges no such right…. The only sensible course—and, happily, the one supported by reams of precedent—is to hold that the right to receive information does not apply here. A plaintiff may not invoke that right to challenge a library’s decisions about which books to buy, which books to keep, or which books to remove.

Let’s start with something simple: There’s a definite difference between electing to not buy something and removing something you’ve already purchased from the shelves.

It’s like that pair of underwear, you know the one. The underwear you don’t actually like and only don because you’ve reached the end of the pile. You wouldn’t buy it again, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting rid of it. Because why would you? Why would you give yourself this small comfort, considering that The Sun will eventually go red dwarf, we’ll all be dust, if that, and absolutely nothing matters except what we make, so why not—

Wait, what are we talking about? Are we sponsored by MeUndies now?

No. No, we’re not. We’re not sponsored by any Super PACs, as in “You can Super PAC your junk into the micro modal fabric of these incredibly comfortable underwear that—”

Right, removing books versus not buying them.

There are many, many good reasons to not buy a book, but they all basically come down to the same thing: “I didn’t think the library users here want it. I don’t think they’d find it useful or interesting.”

Not a valid excuse to pass on buying something that might be used by a small number of people or something that’s relevant in the larger culture, which may not be so popular in your particular region, but overall, that’s the usual vibe.

When it comes to passing on purchases, I mean, come on, you can’t just write some horseshit book and expect libraries to buy it because the title is worth a giggle.

unrelated image

And, yes, I agree, we can’t really operate a library if the rules say that people have the right to ANY material, and that the library has to purchase it.

But removing a book is a bit different from demanding a library purchase one. Because when you remove a book, hey, the money’s spent. You can’t unring that bell. The white underwear with the skidmarks will never be the same. Which is why you should buy a new pair of…

Okay, no more jokes about me being sponsored by underwear sales.

Removing a book is a far more fraught process, IMO.

You’ll notice in most policies about book removal that there is rarely, if ever, anything related to a book being controversial, and definitely nothing along the lines of “librarians should remove books that they think are mid.” Many collections policies even specifically outline that books should not be weeded because of public pressure to do so.

So for starters, I think in equating the acts of purchasing a book or not with the act of removing already-purchased books from the shelf ignores the fundamental way libraries operate.

Libraries and Curation

…a library’s collection decisions are government speech and therefore not subject to Free Speech challenge. Many precedents teach that someone engages in expressive activity by curating and presenting a collection of third-party speech. People do this all the time. Think of the editors of a poetry compilation choosing among poems, or a newspaper choosing which editorials to run, or a television station choosing which programs to air. So do governments. Think of a city museum selecting which paintings or sculptures to feature in an exhibit. In the same way, a library expresses itself by deciding how to shape its collection. As one court put it: “With respect to the public library, the government speaks through its selection of which books to put on the shelves and which books to exclude.” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v Gittens, 414 F.3d 23, 28 (D.C. Cir. 2005) [“PETA”]. What the library is saying is: “We think these books are worth reading.”…From the moment they emerged in the mid-19th century, public libraries have shaped their collections to present what they held to be worthwhile literature. What is considered worthwhile, of course, evolves over the years. Public libraries used to exclude most novels, which were thought bad for morals. Today a library would not think of excluding Fifty Shades of Grey. But what has not changed is the fact, as true today as it was in 1850, that libraries curate their collections for expressive purposes. Their collection decisions are therefore government speech…That is what it means to be a library—to make judgments about which books are worth reading and which are not, which ideas belong on the shelves and which do not. If you doubt that, next time you visit the library ask the librarian to direct you to the Holocaust Denial Section.

Let’s do this in the opposite way you should wipe: back to front.

Saying there is no Holocaust Denial Section is a way to say, with some flourish, that there are no books in libraries that deny the Holocaust.

And that’s not true.

I can find, in my state, books by David Irving, including his book Hitler’s War. Irving is a big-time Holocaust denier, and Hitler’s War opens the door by posing that Hitler did not know about the Holocaust. Which is pretty fucking wild. I mean, I know that if I was in charge of an entire country at war, there would probably be a thing or two that slipped through the cracks, but we’d be talking about, like, running out of good coffee and only having some sort of vile vanilla passionfruit chai K-cups for the office Keurig, That I might let slip by me. The murder of millions of people, not so much.

It’s a little tough to find Holocaust Denial books without some looking. Perhaps this is because of censorship, or, hear me out, because there’s a shitload of evidence the Holocaust happened and really no credible basis for thinking it didn’t. Sort of the way it’s hard to find non-fiction about how humans can learn the power of flight.

There IS a Wikipedia page on the Holocaust denial category with a grand total of 5 titles, at least one of which is actually a pamphlet. C’mon, guys. You want me to believe your nonsense, at least get a bindery going, don’t make me have to try and ignore that I’m reading something held together with staples, like a plebe.

When it comes to The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, (which, yikes), I find it’s in…ready for it?

442 libraries.

Sorry for dragging you into this, Taylor Swift. Whenever I ask the question of whether I’m ready for it, I think of this song and how, No, I honestly wasn’t ready for Reputation, and that’s why you’re the musician and I’m the music-enjoyer, because you know what you’re doing.

I found the book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel in many, many American libraries. I mean, California, duh, and Evanston, of course,

but then *gasp* in Richardson, TEXAS!? LAREDO, too!?

So, I mean, yeah, there’s not like a Holocaust Denial section, a set-aside, embellished part of the library with Party City decorations, let’s not even speculate on what those would be, where we feature materials that deny the Holocaust. But these materials definitely exist, and many libraries have them.

Many libraries have climate change denial materials. WE HAVE THIS BULLSHIT:

Which, by the way, because I can’t help but remind everyone that RFK Jr. is a complete piece of shit who knows science about as well as I know the flavor of dog dick, let’s take a detour and look at Brian Hooker, PhD for a second:

Hooker was a board member of Focus Autism,^[3] (now called Focus for Health) an organization which believes in the "ongoing cover-up of the vaccine/autism link".

Hooker has no background or qualifications in epidemiology.

Hooker published a paper titled "Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young African American boys: a reanalysis of CDC data" in the journal Translational Neurodegeneration.^[9] …Later, the journal retracted the paper for scientific misconduct, saying that Hooker had not disclosed important conflicts of interest…Hooker had filed a case for compensation with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

[tl;dr on that last one: Hooker was creating “scientific” material that “demonstrated” something he was actively trying to prove in court so that he could get money]

Hooker, and I can’t even fucking believe this is real, went to Texas in 2025 to interview the parents of a child who’d died of measles and did not get the MMR vaccine. In the interview, some snippets:

“[the mother] says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”

…

“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”

“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said in English, referring to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination children typically receive before attending school. She said her stance on vaccination has not changed after her daughter’s death.

“The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said of her other four surviving children who were treated with castor oil and inhaled steroids and recovered.

The couple told CHD that their daughter had measles for days when she became tired and the girl’s labored breathing prompted the couple to take her to Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock. There, the girl was intubated and died a few days later. The other children came down with measles after their sister died.

…

The deceased girl’s father insisted that measles helps build up a person’s immune system. “Also the measles are good for the body for the people,” the father said, explaining “You get an infection out.”

I guess some folks operate under a very different standard that would say a 20% child mortality rate in the home is “good.”

After finishing up these interviews with these parents who made some pretty idiotic choices that resulted in the preventable death of a child, Hooker GOT FUCKING MEASLES, GOT ON A FUCKING AIRPLANE WITH MEASLES, AND FUCKING FLEW HOME WITH MEASLES.

Even if you’re super stupid and don’t think vaccines are a good idea, you have to, HAVE to know that measles can be pretty dangerous and maybe you should delay your flight a bit?

This, THIS is the co-author emblazoned on the cover of this book. That’s…whatever the word we can agree upon today, this is that.

*sigh* Okay, back to the point:

Libraries have materials that the librarians themselves don’t believe are necessarily scientifically accurate, and having a book on the shelf is neither a personal nor a professional reflection on the librarian who purchased it nor their opinions.

That is what it means to be a library—to make judgments about which books are worth reading and which are not, which ideas belong on the shelves and which do not.

That’s not at all what it means to be a library. It’s almost the complete opposite.

Look, if I ran a library that way, it’d be super awesome for me and a small handful of authors who have most likely attended Bizarrocon at some point in their lives.

Collections do not reflect librarians. They reflect communities. Community interests, community preferences, and community members’ needs.

Yes, of course, this involves librarians making judgment calls and making decisions. But those decisions are not made by a librarian reading every fucking stupid thriller that goes on the shelves and deciding whether or not they are “Electrifying, a true rollercoaster!” No, these decisions are made, using professional publications and online reviews, to make a best-faith guess as to whether or not a book is something the public will want to read, FOR ANY REASON.

This is why Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free, is in over a hundred libraries. Librarians aren’t exactly known for being nuts about guns. But some of our patrons are.

And, no, it’s not our place to tell you which ideas belong on the shelf.

It’s actually your job to tell us. It’s your job, as a community member, to tell your library which things you want on the shelf.

What the library is saying is: “We think these books are worth reading.”

No, we think YOU think these books might be worth reading. Period.

How Could We Ever Decide!?

How would judges decide when removing a book is forbidden? No one in this case—not plaintiffs, nor the district court, nor the panel—can agree on a standard. May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written? Heaven knows. The panel majority itself disagreed over whether half of the 17 books could be removed. For their part, plaintiffs took the baffling view that libraries cannot even remove books that espouse racism.

Right, because, as is the case with books as well as LAW, there is an extent to which things are on a “case by case basis.”

Isn’t that, like, an expression FROM LAW? I mean, are we seriously saying that this decision you’re making is valid because people disagree on the concept of vulgarity and what’s over the line? So they need you to come in and create order from all the chaos? Someone to make, like, a JUDGEment?

But, here, I can help:

May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because the library finds it vulgar? Poorly written? Easy answer: No. Because “a library” cannot dislike a book, the library’s staff, admin, and sometimes local politicians can, but a library, as a whole, cannot.

Heaven knows whether a library can do that, and so does Pete: No.

Why?

Because NOBODY wants a book removed because someone considers it “poorly written.” Trust me, you don’t want that.

I’m gonna share a hot take here: I think The Scarlet Letter is poorly written. Perhaps it was considered good writing in its time, but when a sentence begins with a few words at the top of the page, then we enter an independent clause that runs the entirety of the page, only to emerge back into the main idea of the sentence like 30 lines later, Pete is not impressed.

I can easily, easily make the case that The Scarlet Letter is not well-written based on my personal preferences for things like brevity, clarity, and prose that’s unembellished.

Just to underline that, I can make the case that The Scarlet Letter is a book that should not be in the library while Ghost Dick: Private Eye is something that should be on the shelf.

Now, when we talk about inaccuracy and being outdated, sometimes that can be dicey, like outdated opinions on race relations, for instance, but I think those standards are generally applied to things like, for example, books that say Pluto is a planet. And that’s really, super not the same thing as removing a book because it’s about farts and I don’t like that.

Everyone Calm Down

Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books.

Er, there’s actually a “Book Banning” section on Llano County’s Wikipedia page, and it reads:

Llano county libraries were purged of books containing sex education and discussion of racism in 2021 and 2022 by county commissioners. Titles removed include In the Night Kitchen, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and Between the World and Me. Librarian Suzette Baker in Kingsland was fired for her refusal to remove books from the shelves. The library board voted unanimously to close its meetings to the public in 2022.^[19][20] After a lawsuit was filed, a federal judge ruled in March 2023 that at least 12 of the books must be placed back onto shelves.^[21] In response, county commissioners considered closing the library in a special meeting.^[22] They have appealed the decision by the federal judge.^[23]

So, I mean, yikes. People absolutely are banning books in this instance. That’s precisely what we’re talking about.

If a disappointed patron can’t find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore, or borrow it from a friend.

Right, he can pay for it, is what you mean.

If you’re not satisfied with the service you receive from the fire department, you can buy your own sprinkler system and have your neighbors all hook up their hoses!

If you’re not satisfied with the policing, you can fall into a cave infested with bats and hit on the idea of becoming a nighttime vigilante.

If you’re not satisfied with the sewer system, you can just buy a porta-shitter and have it serviced at an interval that works for you.

This is someone not understanding that the problem isn’t necessarily that I can’t find a book that I think would be fun to read, it’s that public money is being used to build a collection that is not comprehensive in terms of giving taxpayers a reasonable survey of what the world is reading.

Finally, we note with amusement (and some dismay) the unusually over-caffeinated arguments made in this case. Judging from the rhetoric in the briefs, one would think Llano County had planned to stage a book burning in front of the library.

I mean, fuck off with this shit.

“We’re amused by how much this is bothering you all. Chill out, bro.”

I’m glad you think it’s funny. Up to now we knew that you didn’t find farts funny, but this helps us see what you DO appreciate in terms of humor: People being unhappy that you’re censoring libraries.

Hilarious.

How Libraries Work

I…don’t think this court actually knows how a library works.

It seems the court is under the impression that librarians do a lot of very personal picking and choosing that we’re not doing. It seems the court kind of buys into the idea that librarians, these rogue intellectuals, are shaping the youth the way they think they should be shaped by purchasing certain materials.

Librarians, and libraries, offer options. That’s it.

A good library will offer you a reasonable set of options, and you, as a discerning reader, can take or leave whichever items suit you. And offering options means sometimes offering bad options.

There’s a saying in librarianship: A good library should have something that offends everyone.

I don’t like that, though, because I think it makes it seem like the library is trying to offend everyone.

I think a better version is: If you personally like every item in a library, then that library sucks at serving an entire community.