Attempt to Ban Houston Library's 'Drag Queen Storytime' on Religious Grounds Fails | Texas Lawyer...

For the uninformed, the Montrose area of Houston is the area of town that is known as an LGBTQ area, in much the same way as Greenwich Village and Chelsea are in New York City, or the Oak Lawn/Cedar Springs area of Dallas.

Here, local drag queens read stories at the local library, and the fundamentalist Christians had a cow, demanding that it be shut down as promoting "secular humanism," a "religion" closely associated with the LGBTQ community. When it was not shut down, they filed a federal lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

Well, besides sounding stupid on its face, it did not take long for the U.S. District Judge to toss the case, noting that none of the fundies even bothered to show up to be offended at one of the readings, and noting that even if one assumed for the sake of argument that secular humanism was a religion and was tied to the LGBTQ community, none of the story time readings discussed secular humanism at all.

Apparently, just being gay or lesbian is enough to promote the "religion" of secular humanism in the fundies opinion. Their view is that allowing the story time is "brainwashing the children of Houston" into a worldview that the fundies don't like.

Too bad. The judge thought it was too far of a stretch also, noting that "the plaintiffs do not allege facts that do or could show that the event is a religious activity, there is no issue of establishment of religion, and the complaint fails to state a claim...."