Authors file briefs ahead of hearing
Arguments against book bans submitted to Va. Beach court
VIRGINIA BEACH — Parties on all sides have doubled down on their arguments in the Virginia Beach Circuit Court case involving two books a former congressional candidate is asking a judge to rule obscene for children.
The authors, publishers and various booksellers such as Barnes and Noble have come forward since a judge found probable cause to support the petitioners’ allegations that “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe and “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas are inappropriate for children and should be restricted similar to how rated-R movies are.
The most recently filed brief from Kobabe said, “Petitioner Tommy Altman dislikes what he sees on seven pages of an award-winning 240-page book. From that small sample, and without addressing the graphic novel as a whole, he seeks an unconstitutional ruling that the entire book is obscene.”
Maas and her publisher, Bloomsbury, echoed this argument in their own petition to dismiss the case, saying that Altman “cherry picks approximately a dozen passages from the more than six-hundred-pages in the Book.”
This argument that neither book meets the criteria set by state and constitutional law to be considered obscene, which requires looking at the work as a whole, has been reiterated by the publishers, Bloomsbury and Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group, in arguments filed prior to the Aug. 30 hearing.
However, Del. Tim Anderson and Altman stated in their response Friday that a “one-sizefits-all obscenity standard” for adults and children no longer applies.
The petitioner’s brief filed Friday said, “Long gone are the days of the minor sneaking a ‘girly’ magazine from their dad’s dresser as the sole method of obtaining adult content. Now, the American Librarian Association, school librarians and school administrators readily make sexual materials available to minors and recommend them for children as young as 12 years old to read in schools without parent knowledge, consent or
veto.”
Both “Gender Queer” and “A Court of Mist and Fury” were previously found in certain Virginia Beach Public School libraries, though “Gender Queer” was removed from the shelves after a school board group determined the graphic novel was “pervasively vulgar.” The petitioner’s brief indicates that a recent search of the division’s online library catalog did not find “A Court of Mist and Fury.”
“This is not about banning books,” Altman said in a previous interview with The Virginian-Pilot. “It’s about restoring parental rights.”
Though the books were previously found in libraries, Barnes and Noble stated in court documents, “the Petitioner seeks to move beyond just the schools and deploy an antiquated statute to limit access to books generally in bookstores and elsewhere.”
Altman and Anderson have also filed for a temporary restraining order that would prohibit “any person who sells, rents, lends, transports in interstate commerce, commercially distributes or exhibits the books, or has the book in his possession.” However, Oni-Lion Forge previously stated in court documents that this order does not show any “good faith effort to identify ‘all persons’ ” it might apply to, therefore these restrictions would violate the booksellers’ rights to free speech and due process. Local booksellers such as Prince Books in Norfolk and Read Books in Virginia Beach and other groups advocating for free speech have shown their support for dismissing these cases.
A hearing for both cases is set for this end of this month.