A book burning? Are they serious? We live in America and the idea that some group of folks can determine what everyone else can read is appalling!
Library fight riles up city, leads to book-burning demand
(CNN) – A fight over books depicting sex and homosexuality has riled up a small Wisconsin city, cost some library board members their positions and prompted a call for a public book burning.
A washing machine was part of a July 4 parade float made by a group seeking changes at West Bend’s library.
The battle has stirred much of West Bend, a city of roughly 30,000 people about 35 miles north of Milwaukee. Residents have sparred for months on blogs, airwaves and at meetings, including one where a man told the city’s library director he should be tarred and feathered.
The row even spread to this year’s Fourth of July parade, which included a float featuring a washing machine and a sign that read "keep our library clean."
"If you told me we would be going through a book challenge of this nature, I’d think, ‘Never in a million years,’ " said Michael Tyree, director of the West Bend Community Memorial Library.
The strife began in February when West Bend couple Jim and Ginny Maziarka objected to some of the content in the city library’s young-adult section. They later petitioned the library board to move any sexually explicit books — the definition of which would be debated — from the young-adult section to the adult section and to label them as sexually explicit.
Ginny Maziarka, 49, said the books in the section of the library aimed at children aged 12 to 18 included homosexual and heterosexual content she thought was inappropriate for youths.
(More at the article)
Amd some whiners have the unbelievable temerity to claim that their emotional and mental well-being are somehow threatened by books simply existing at the library??? If you disagree with a book that much, don’t read it. State your opposition. But no one has the right to demand that a book be banned for everyone simply because some folks don’t like it.
Outside West Bend, the fight caught the attention of Robert Braun, who, with three other Milwaukee-area men, filed a claim against West Bend calling for one of the library’s books to be publicly burned, along with financial damages.
The four plaintiffs — who describe themselves as "elderly" in their complaint — claim their "mental and emotional well-being was damaged by [the] book at the library."
The claim, unconnected to the Maziarkas, says the book "Baby Be-bop" — a fictional piece about a homosexual teenager — is "explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian."
Braun, who says he is president of a Milwaukee group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union, said he singled out the book because it "goes way over the line" with offensive language and descriptions of sex acts.
The call for burning the book showed his passion, Braun, 74, said. "I don’t sit on the fence when I do these things. When I make a decision to speak up on something, I go for it."
The ALA will help the library oppose the claim if it goes forward, Caldwell-Stone said, adding she felt that was unlikely because "it has very little basis in law."
Library fight riles up city, leads to book-burning demand – CNN.com
Recent Comments