In a sign of how unhinged the Republican war on books has gotten, Texas conservatives have decided fart jokes are "pornography." In a text message exchange between two book-banning advocates in Llano, Texas, one wrote that it would be better to "close the library" than "put the porn back into the kid's section!" Among the books that her group deems "porn": "Larry the Farting Leprechaun," "My Butt is So Noisy!" and "Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose." Other materials that conservatives in Llano determined were sexually explicit materials meant to arouse libidinous desires include "They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group" by history writer Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Tillie Walden's Eisner Award-winning graphic memoir about ice skating, "Spinning." All this does make one want to learn more about the masturbatory habits of Texas Republicans, but sadly, the more pressing issue at hand is that this "porn" designation for these books is being used as a pretext by those who wish to shut down the library altogether.
For months, the nationwide frenzy of book banning that has infected the GOP has been inflicted with special vengeance on this small town about an hour and a half's drive from Austin. It started when county officials in Llano, jumping on the GOP book-banning bandwagon, drew up a list of books to remove from the library. A librarian who refused to comply was fired. Many of the books were targeted for fart jokes, but other targets included books that were anti-racist or pro-LGBTQ, as well as "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak, which is commonly targeted by the religious right because it has an innocent drawing of a kid's naked butt. Local residents successfully sued, forcing the books back onto the shelves, where they were all immediately checked out.
