A broad coalition of educational, civil rights, and literary advocacy organizations are banding together to sound the alarm over proposed legislation that would make access to books more difficult in Texas.
More than a dozen such bills have been filed this legislative session. This isn't new, recent laws have targeted reading materials. Laney Hawes is co-founder of Texas Freedom to Read Project and says these new laws go too far. "We want to protect the freedom to read and access information and ideas." She says not doing so has a damaging effect.
Texas districts have banned hundreds of books in the past two years. The banned books range from children's picture books to young adult fiction to nonfiction.
She says a lot of legislation in the pipeline is based on censorship and will affect access to books. She says one bill would criminalize almost anyone who allows a child to have access to material that they deem to be harmful to minors. She says they are re-writing the language in the laws that exist. They are rewriting what harmful to minors means. They are opening up criminal liability to just about anyone.
"This could mean that if you want to put a little free library in your front yard, if you put the Color Purple or the Kite Runner and if a child gets it, you could be charged with a crime." The bottom line, she says, is people will be so terrified they'll be charged with a crime they'll stop sharing books.
As the law now stands, people who want a book banned at their child's school district take it to that school board. A new law would allow the challenge to go directly to the State Board of Education, where it could be banned statewide. "That is going to give the power to ban books to a handful of people who are already traveling the state with lists of hundreds and hundreds of books. It's giving them one place to ban them statewide. It's going to be devastating."
She says no one wants to give children pornography, even though they are accused of it all the time. "No one wants to give children pornography. But these wide sweeping laws are going to have devastating impacts and they don't look at the material in context. They don't look at the entire book. They look at a book like the Color Purple or All Boys Aren't Blue and say one page has a scene we deem to be harmful to minors and it's now, boom, banned."
The law has always required them to look at books as a whole, in context. A new bill would remove that line and define some books, like the Color Purple, as material harmful to minors and equate them with pornography. "These bills are about control and censorship."
These bills include:
HB267: Relating to affirmative defenses to prosecution for certain offenses involving material or conduct that is obscene or otherwise harmful to children.
HB947: Relating to affirmative defenses to prosecution for certain offenses involving material or conduct that is obscene or otherwise harmful to children.
HB995: Relating to defenses to prosecution for certain criminal offenses involving material or conduct that may be obscene or is otherwise harmful to children.
HB1012: Relating to the prosecution of the criminal offense of sale, distribution, or display of harmful material to a minor.
HB1025: Relating to the appointment of an inspector general for education, the creation of a division of inspector general for education in the State Board of Education to investigate public education, and the authority of the commissioner of education to conduct special investigations.
HB1434: Relating to affirmative defenses to prosecution for certain offenses involving material or conduct that is obscene or otherwise harmful to children.
HB2030: AN ACT relating to affirmative defenses to prosecution for certain criminal offenses involving material or conduct that may be obscene or is otherwise harmful to children.
SB89: Relating to defenses to prosecution for certain criminal offenses involving material or conduct that may be obscene or is otherwise harmful to children.
SB242: Relating to affirmative defenses to prosecution for certain criminal offenses involving material or conduct that may be obscene or is otherwise harmful to children.
SB412:Relating to affirmative defenses to prosecution for certain offenses involving material or conduct that is obscene or otherwise harmful to children.
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