Legal Censorship Is Rearing Its Head In Texas and Beyond
This is an appropprate post to follow my last one. The parents of Katy are up to their anti-freedom shenanigans again, and this time they are dragging the cops into their bullshit. Several months ago, a book, Flamer by Mike Curato, was challenged by Katy parents. They believed it should not be permitted for minors. Basically it is about a boy who discovers that he might be gay while away at summer camp. I have no idea if it is any good, but the descriptions I found of it online make it seem pretty tame
Katy ISD duly reviewed the book and decided, in thier solomaic wisdom, that it was not appropriate for junior high classes, but was fine for high school. If Katy ISD thought this half-measure would appease the nuts, they were wrong.
One of these nuts (unnamed in the Houston Chronicle article), “told police she already filed complaints about the book with the district, according to the police report, but she was not satisfied with the outcome of the subsequent decision made regarding its appropriateness.” Just like Trump’s brainwashed goons, she doesn’t really believe it is possible for her to lose. But she did. When she lost, she called the cops. The Katy ISD cops. (Why Katy ISD has its own police department, I don’t know. Why does everyone get their own police department these days?)
Now she wasn’t willing to let Katy ISD cops handle it all. “The complainant said she wanted to file a police report ‘so she may then take a copy of it to the Texas Rangers,’ the document says.” She wanted the Texas Rangers to act as her own personal censorship police.
The Atlantic had a disturbing example of expansion of speech suppression into the legal realm in Mississippi. “Why Freedom of Speech Is the Next Abortion Fight” by Yascha Mounk tells how a pro-choice group called Mayday Health put up a website explaining to Mississippi residents how they can get around Mississippi’s dreadful anti-abortion laws. It apparently went live in July, they “eceived a subpoena from the office of the attorney general of Mississippi. The subpoena, which I [Yascha Mounk] have seen, demands a trove of documents about Mayday Health and its activities. It may be the first step in an effort to force Mayday Health to take down the billboards, or even to prosecute the organization’s leaders for aiding and abetting criminal conduct.” Mounk uses this article to discuss how anti-abortion states are trying to stamp out free speech on the subject.
The mom in Katy, the attorney gereral of Mississippi—they are ridiculous people and not likely to affect me presonally. But this is step one on their path to anti-freedom.
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