Current mood:

Grouchy

I doubt this lawsuit will go anywhere, but there's some serious overreaction here
(Articles are here and here)

I might be missing several details here, because this thing seems like a sprawling mess that's only partially explained in the articles, but here goes:

Francesca Lia Block is a rather well-known YA author whose works frequently touch on things like HIV, homosexuality, premarital sex and pregnancy, and all sorts of other scandalous things that children should OMG never be exposed to.

There is a group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union that has decided that her books are something that no one should be exposed to. Earlier in the year, concerned citizens in the town of West Bend, WI petitioned their local library to separate out all teen books with "explicit" material and keep them away from... teenagers. When the library's trustees flat out denied the petition (and four of them may have lost their appointments for failure to comply with it), the CCLU came and filed suit.

Four elderly gentlemen were exposed to Block's book Baby Be-Bop, which is the story of a gay teen who gets beaten up by a homophobic gang. This exposure was so damaging that they are requesting $120,000 in damages ($30,000/person). This book, which contains several racial and gay slurs, hurt them so much that they want to have it declared obscene and they call it a hate crime.

They are also asking for the mayor's resignation, because she allowed the public to be exposed to the book (and I'm sure the fact that she supported bringing the fired trustees back has nothing to do with it it all).

And they want the library to publicly burn the book.

Cheap publicity stunt, yes, but they're calling for a library to burn books. D:

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the__ivorytower
2009-06-16 03:55 pm UTC (link)

Wat.

One of my favourite stories ever from my private school is my chemistry teacher telling us about a whole bunch of books he thought we'd enjoy, and I swear I'm the only one who bothered to go to our library and check, to discover three of the four books had at some point had been banned, long ago, and no one had taken them upstairs, where such things were kept. The Frère who worked at the counter smiled at me happily, and went to go get them, and so I borrowed Brave New World, Animal Farm, 1984 and War of the Worlds (the one that wasn't restricted, I found that easily).

...he was seriously the nicest little old man ever.

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	shark 2009-06-16 04:08 pm UTC (link)
	There is a rule about chemistry teachers and good taste in books, I swear. Mine told me something along the lines of, "You like reading. You need to set down the dragon romance novels and pick up some Neal Stephenson, like yesterday." (I picked up the Stephenson. It is still in my "to read" pile, which is not 2700 miles away from me.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

the__ivorytower
2009-06-16 04:12 pm UTC (link)

My chemistry teacher was in all ways awesome. He instituted the three minute break (We had 75 minute long classes) and he'd give us a break that was basically however long it took him to smoke a cig underneath the vent hood in the chemistry lab. We managed to convince most of our teachers to go along with it, except out french teacher, who felt we should be working for the whole 75 minutes, and our math teacher, who looked at us and went, "I'm going to teach you for twenty minutes. You have the rest of the class to do whatever you want, whether it be homework or socializing quietly, or asking me questions. No break". We lived with that. XD

My chemistry teacher also liked model rockets and iBooks.

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	blankverses 2009-06-16 04:28 pm UTC (link)
	Excellent. One of my favourite things about my middle school library was their "banned book" campaign, as in "Read a Banned Book Today". They had tables set up all over the library with copies of all sorts of books that had been banned throughout history, and little flyers telling you why they'd been banned in the first place. It was just the coolest thing ever. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dez_chan 2009-06-16 05:12 pm UTC (link)
	I remember years ago when I was doing a project on censorship, there was a website that talked about getting incredibly hardcore pornography and requesting it be put in the banned books display. When the librarian refused, they wanted to know if there was going to be another display the next week for books that were banned from Banned Books Week. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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