Gail Sweet, Library Director for the Burlington County Library System, has decided that she is the sole source of moral sanity in a gay rainstorm (a gaynstorm, if you will) of depravity. Or, at the very least, displayed her appalling lack of backbone in the face of criticism.
According to School Library Journal, Sweet has removed an anthology of LGBT teen essays from her library shelves, with the only official reason being her opinion that it is “child pornography.” Apparently, there was no formal complaint from a library patron about the book. Instead, this library director took this course of action after receiving a crotchety email from an elderly member of Glenn Beck’s “9.12” nutbags. Who, incidentally, have targeted this book at other libraries before.
Naturally, people are free to be offended by whatever they choose. I choose to be deeply offended that Gail Sweet is working in the information profession at all, never mind in a director’s position, when she is so cavalier with the core ideals of the library profession. I’m almost as offended that a fellow librarian would tarnish my Scotty-like image as a magical fact-finding wizard by offering such flawed reasoning for her unilateral decision. Child pornography? Really? Well, I found the Go Ask Alice Book of Answers in the Burlington catalog. Is that going away, too? How about the myriad teen fiction books that portray sexual awakenings among heterosexual teens; are those also breaking child porn laws? Is the director going to send cryptic emails about removing adult mysteries and thrillers that reference or depict illegal sexual behavior?
Now, if the community that the library serves demanded that the book be removed, and it was clear that nobody in the community was reading it or checking it out, that would be one thing. If the removal was the result of a formal review process overseen by more people than the director, her deputy, and a shit-stirring book-burner, that would be another thing. But the way this was handled not only betrays what librarians are supposed to be about, but encourages the ravings of like-minded lunatics who besiege libraries every day with attempts to control what everybody reads. Or, even worse, encourages similar, heretofore restrained lunatics who work in libraries and already have responsibility for shepherding information.
I mean, if I had my way, I’d take all of Glenn Beck’s insipid books off of my shelves, cut the pages into little pieces, rearrange the words into gay erotic haiku, and slip them back into the covers for kicks. Instead, I happily direct patrons who ask for them to where they sit, sliming up my political shelves. You know, because of that pesky code of ethics that reassures library patrons that I won’t inject my personal opinion into their information search.
And it’s certainly not as if the idea of somebody panicking about “THE CHILDRENZ!!1!” learning about sex is a new one. It’s pretty common knowledge that sex raises more hackles than violence among the ignorant and self-righteous. Just ask Fox News’s Diedre Behar, who is shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that a teenaged actress admitted to masturbating. Rantings about the “perversion” of allowing gay youth to read something that reassures them and teaches them about themselves should not be news to anyone who works in libraries. If we torched every book that someone decided other people shouldn’t read, we wouldn’t have any books on our shelves worth reading.
Librarians are not supposed to display this kind of hypocrisy. Library directors are certainly not supposed to display this kind of hypocrisy. We’re supposed to fight for the free dissemination of information, and encourage people to read things that strangers tell them they shouldn’t. Come on, Gail, we just got some indie cred from NPR; don’t fuck this up for us.
