Wisconsin Community Calls for a Book Burning

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And you thought Fahrenheit 451 was fiction! For over four months now, a library in West Bend, Wisconsin has debated with a local group that aims to remove “explicitly vulgar” material from the young adult section. The list of now 82 titles are said to show homosexuality in a positive light, including one book they wish to have publicly burned.

The title which has raised the biggest controversy is Francesca Lia Block’s novel >Baby Be-Bop. Block, who won the American Library Association’s >2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, writes frequently about a character named Weetzie Bat and describes gay marriage, children out of wedlock, abortion, and common-law marriage in language which makes it understandable to teenagers and adolescents.

Two articles on the dispute, one by CNN and another by the ALA’s Beverly Goldberg, have been passed around Twitter a lot in the last week. They also note the other demands made by both the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries and Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU), which include “the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for ‘allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.’” It was the CCLU who then suggested the book being “publicly burned”.

Other books on the list of questionable titles include The Geography Club by Brent Hartinger and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the latter of which was referenced earlier on this blog as on the ALA’s list of “Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2008”. Wallflower concerns an introverted high school freshman and his experiences with both homosexual and heterosexual sex, as well as rape and drug use.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association reported to CNN that the concerned parents’ demand to have certain books either removed or transferred to the adult section, “with the intent of restricting access” could be deemed a form of censorship and, “a burden on First Amendment rights”.