{"id":420189,"date":"2026-08-29T11:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T11:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/420189\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T11:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T11:16:08","slug":"the-week-that-texas-asked-itself-whats-erotic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/420189\/","title":{"rendered":"The week that Texas asked itself: What’s erotic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thumbs up: Federal Judge David Hittner held this week that\u00a0the state\u2019s ban on drag shows<\/a> was unconstitutional and offered useful advice for living in a free country: \u201c[F]or those who find such activities as described in this case offensive, the solution is relatively simple \u2026 just don\u2019t go.\u201d Maybe the complainants hadn\u2019t thought of that yet? The decision came just in time for mourners to properly honor the late Dolly Parton, who Hittner cited in his ruling. Dolly, the inspiration behind one of the performers who took the state to court, was critical of the Texas law that restricted drag shows. And Hittner noted that the law might have caused problems for Dolly’s own act: \u201cThere are \u2018erotic\u2019 elements in countless popular performances that could be subject to both civil and criminal penalties.\u201d The singer was, after all, perhaps best known for a pair of assets unrelated to her songs. Her biggest pet peeve, she once told David Letterman: \u201cNobody notices I\u2019ve got a great ass, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thumbs down: Don\u2019t worry, prudes, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is still working tirelessly<\/a> on your behalf. The Republican published a list of thousands of naughty books that he said he would penalize Texas public schools for carrying in their libraries. Among them? \u201cNight\u201d by Elie Wiesel. At first we assumed Patrick thought any book named \u201cNight\u201d must be \u201cdirty, filthy, vulgar,\u201d as he called the list\u2019s entries. (After all, in his former life as a radio host, Patrick had a vasectomy live on the air. We don\u2019t expect him to parse the fine points of good taste.) But when reporters asked Patrick about the book, it turned out that he has read it, or is at least aware that it\u2019s the first-person story of a Holocaust survivor: He told reporters he thought it was too mature for middle schoolers. Trouble is, our Republican-controlled State Board of Education just approved it as part of the eighth grade required reading list for 2030.<\/p>\n

Thumbs twiddled: Sex sells. But the Houston-area store Adam & Eve says that\u2019s not what\u2019s going on at its franchise in Fort Bend County. In a lawsuit against the county, the chain contends that Adam & Eve outpost is a \u201cspecialty retail boutique,\u201d not a sexually oriented business\u00a0\u2014 and so should be treated like a bra shop, and exempt from the the heavy regulation applied to strip clubs and porn stores. But county investigators say the store cleaned up its act only after they visited: \u201cThey\u2019ve removed\u00a0all the crotchless panties,<\/a>\u201d the chief of the Regulatory Division for the Fort Bend County Attorney\u2019s Office told Chron. \u201cThey\u2019ve removed all of the lingerie that exposes nipples and have replaced it with full-length lingerie that goes down to the floor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thumbs down: When you read above that Texas is fighting to stop drag shows and keep acclaimed literature out of kids’ hands, was your first thought, Wow, what a waste of tax dollars? If so the Economic Policy Institute has news that\u2019ll make your fiscally conservative heart hurt even more. The think tank released a Deportation Calculator<\/a> to show exactly what taxpayers in different parts of the country are paying for Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation campaign. According to the EPI, the mass-deportation spending Congress approved in the One Big Beuatiful Bill Act will cost the average taxpayer in the city of Houston around $3,683. You didn\u2019t need that for anything else, did you?<\/p>\n

Thumbs up: Speaking of tax dollars, we don\u2019t blame any Harris County resident for being miffed about a proposed property tax increase that would fund raises for most countywide elected officials. But spare County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth from your wrath: Hudspeth rejected a 70% raise, reasoning that it would be a bad look to boost her pay while she\u2019s also trying to get her office a bigger budget. Not only is this an honorable move, it\u2019s good politics \u2013 Hudspeth is up for reelection this year, and why give \u201celection integrity\u201d truthers any kind of ammo? Maybe the county can redirect the money that would\u2019ve gone in her pocket towards making sure that our elections go off without a hitch.<\/p>\n

Thumbs down: The Gulf of America has company. Amid a trade war with our neighbors to the north, the Trump administration announced it was renaming Lake Ontario<\/a> to Lake America. Students once learned the Great Lakes remembering that their names first letters spelled HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior). Now they’ll have to go with SHAME. And could this renaming push hit our own state again? What\u2019ll happen to Paris, Texas?\u00a0 Or to Dublin, birthplace of Dr Pepper? Will the Rio Grande become the Big River? or worse, the Big America River? Pretty soon, we could all be living in America, Texas.<\/p>\n

Thumbs up: Ever since Bud Adams uprooted the Oilers and planted them in Tennessee as the Titans, Houston tried to claw back bits and pieces of their legacy. Instead, the Titans have remained defiant and, dare we say, spiteful. It\u2019s one thing to keep Earl Campbell\u2019s number in the Titans\u2019 ring of honor when he never played a snap in Nashville. But wearing the classic Oilers helmet and jerseys twice when playing the Texans is just rude. So we had a hearty chuckle when the Texans rolled out this year\u2019s \u201crivalry\u201d uniforms and noticed that the colors bore a striking\u00a0 resemblance to the Oilers\u2019 old powder blue and scarlet. The jerseys don\u2019t have the oil derrick logo\u00a0\u2014 justice for Ol\u2019 Riggy!\u00a0\u2014 but they subtly nod to our city\u2019s iconography, with a pattern honoring curb-sign street tiles and a chrome accent on the facemasks to celebrate custom cars. Nothing will replace what Adams stole from Houston nearly 30 years ago, but we\u2019ll settle for kicking the Titans\u2019 tails a couple of times in these spiffy threads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thumbs up: Federal Judge David Hittner held this week that\u00a0the state\u2019s ban on drag shows was unconstitutional and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-420189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}