A congressional candidate has filed a lawsuit against a Barnes & Noble store in Virginia Beach to stop them from selling two books, “Gender Queer” and “A Court of Mist and Fury” to minors.
Tommy Altman, a conservative Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 2nd District, ordered his attorney to seek a restraining order against the Virginia Beach bookseller and schools “prohibiting them from selling or lending these books to minors without parental consent (sic)”. Virginia Beach attorney and state delegate Tim Anderson wrote on Facebook Wednesday.
“We are in a major fight. Lawsuits like this can be filed throughout Virginia. There are dozens of books. Hundreds of schools,” Anderson added.
His announcement comes as he celebrated a “huge legal victory” over the censorship of underage books.
On Wednesday, a Virginia Beach circuit court “found probable cause that the books ‘Gender Queer’ and ‘A Court of Mist and Fury’ are obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors,” he wrote.
The decision came just days after the school board voted to remove “Gender Queer” from its shelves.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/L3CFSKD2G5HDLF6QYNFM2NQVTM.jpg)
Altman took a victory lap on social media after the decision, writing on Twitter that “We will NEVER go back to the party of Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney” and that “Today’s GOP puts America first.” and Americans”.
On Facebook, he shared a screenshot of a story about winning the “legal battle to get graphic sex books removed” from schools, adding a number of hashtags including #Grooming, #Indoctrination, # Conservative and #AmericaFirst.
“Gender Queer: A Memoir” is an award-winning graphic novel written by Maia Kobabe, a non-binary, queer author and illustrator from California. A star-studded review from School Library Journal describes it as “a great resource for those who identify as non-binary or asexual as well as those who know someone who identifies this way and want to understand more.”
Early last month, the American Library Association announced that the graphic novel topped the list of the nation’s most contested books of 2021.
The massive 2016 bestseller and critically acclaimed “A Court of Mist and Fury,” by Sarah J. Mass, was singled out for a consensual heterosexual sex scene between the two main characters.