The publishers decision came after months of Texas Board of Education hearings in which family-planning, anti-abortion, gay-advocacy, fundamentalist Christian and other groups debated the merits of five health texts, written by Holt and four other publishers.
The board, which buys all text-books for the state, last month requested a total of 400 revisions in the five texts, with the largest percentage of them for the Holt book, including the deletion of toll-free numbers for gay and lesbian groups and for teenage suicide prevention groups.
The state wanted to see passages on homosexuality abridged, the addition of language describing Texas's sodomy laws and the deletion of a number of clinical illustrations, including a self-examination for testicular cancer and two comparing circumcised and uncircumcised penises.
Textbooks sales in Texas represent about 8 percent of the $2.2 billion national market for textbooks. The state is second only to California which represents about 12 percent. Texas is also one of 22 states in which government committees must approve all texts sold in the state. Because Texas controls such a large market share, publishers often develop texts to meet the standards set by its 15-member Board of Education and then market them nationwide
Source: New York Times, 3/17/94