A new Texas law forces vendors to rate sexual content in schoolbooks

A new Texas law forces vendors to rate sexual content in schoolbooks. They’re not happy about it

Book vendors selling to Texas public schools, ranging from national sellers like Amazon to local bookstores with eight employees, must now rate all the books they sell based on sexual content, according to new legislation signed into law June 12.

Vendors?

The law’s primary author, Republican Texas State Rep. Jared Patterson, said its aim is simple: Get sexually explicit content out of schools.

I agree with the “Get sexually explicit content out of schools”.

But the burden of rating these books falls on book vendors.

Should the publishers not be responsible for the rating, and not the vendors?

Under the ‘Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources’ Act, or the READER Act, vendors that sell books to Texas public schools must assign every title that describes or portrays sexual conduct one of two labels: sexually explicit or sexually relevant.

But I think the books/novels/trades/magazines/etc should all come with a ratings on it, just like movies are rated for sexual content.  This should be at the publisher’s level.

Just like they list books that are for young children, children, young adult, adult/exotic, they can easily add those two labels.

But not the vendor.

“They’ve encapsulated the whole entire industry,” (Ben Conn, President of the Educational Book and Media Association) said. “That would be like to say Paramount’s going to come out with a movie and every individual movie theater could then go ahead and rate the movie differently. It just makes no sense whatsoever.”

That is why a national body (like the MPA does for movies) but for books/novels/etc?