Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 17, 1994 TAG: 9403170122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARA LEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Nearly 50 residents - evenly split for and against - showed up to hear the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library Board's decision. The board, despite the Censorship Committee's strong recommendation both to keep the book and keep it in the Easy Readers section, voted to wait until the April 20 meeting to decide if the book should be restricted.
Many of the speakers against the book were older adults. One woman said, "I think it's a disgrace that the town would even have trash like that put before" the public with tax dollars. She derided the bond issue to expand the Blacksburg branch library, which the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors will decide on this month. "Everybody knows that God rained brimstone and hellfire on Sodom and Gomorrah," she said.
A man said that movies, rock music, feminists, gay-rights advocates and journalists were waging "a form of total warfare on Christian faith and morals. Anyone who talks about immorality is called a bigot." He said censorship had become a buzzword of the left. "Censorship is just a sound-bite cop-out," he said.
Jack Le Doux, the head of Montgomery County's branch of the Christian Coalition, said that AIDS, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, were dangers of homosexual sex that the book was silent on.
Nita McNerlin, who began the appeal to the Library Board in February, spoke of the book's legal, not moral, shortcomings. "It condones a lifestyle that includes acts that by Virginia law are a class 6 felony," she said. She added that a book on homosexuality would confuse children about the necessity of following every law on the books.
Many who spoke in favor of the book said their children or children they had worked with had needed this book when they learned of their friends' homosexual families. The owner of a Montgomery County day-care center said children from gay families need to see their homes confirmed, and children from heterosexual families need to learn to tolerate differences, even at preschool age. "So that they understand from the very beginning, we can all get along. I urge you to keep that book on the shelf, it's so important."
T.J. Stone said that as a teacher, therapist, and expectant mother, she wanted to see the book remain. She added that the felony McNerlin referred to, oral sex, could be performed by heterosexuals. She said McNerlin's reasoning "would eliminate many, many books."
Sarah Richardson added that in "Daddy's Roommate," "It says nothing at all about sex."
Lillian Richardson, Virginia Tech Gorvin professor of English, came to the meeting with her son, now in high school. She spoke of her efforts to combat sexist ideas he was exposed to by classmates in day care. She and her son would discuss "dumb ideas" such as men's inability to do housework. She remembered when he came home asking wasn't it a "dumb idea" that two men could not marry.
"It's true," she replied. "They can love each other, and live together, and it's called being gay." She continued passionately, "I knew he would hear `faggot, faggot, faggot.' This was the worst thing you could say. When he heard hate language for the first time, I wanted him to know there is love language."
The committee reported to the board that the book should remain exactly where it is. It said the book does not depict sodomy - just the parent, lover and child reading, gardening, eating, shaving, etc. The report reminded the board that the American Library Association suggests that books not be removed on partisan or doctrinal grounds. The report said library policy is that parents, not library staff, are responsible for monitoring children's reading. Any holder of a library card may check any book out.
The report ended, "To remove or relocate this book would constitute an act of censorship."
Board member Marjorie Modlin said, "I don't see this as an issue of censorship. I'd rather err on the side of caution, but it certainly should not be banned."
The board unanimously voted to keep the book in the collection, but every member except Sally Mackie asked the librarians to reconsider if it should be kept in the children's section.
Mackie spoke against having an "adult shelf," saying such a shelf "might itself become of interest to children."
Interim library Director Ida Comparin first reviewed and denied McNerlin's request to move or remove the book. She said, "We have looked at this for four months." Librarians served on the censorship committee.
The April 20 board meeting will be in the main library at 125 Sheltman St. in Christiansburg.
After the decision, McNerlin, a homemaker and mother of a 3-year-old, said she was satisfied with the direction in which the board was going. "Obviously our first hope is to completely take it out of the library," she said. Would she take her appeal to the Board of Supervisors if the librarians again deny her request? "I hope it doesn't get to that point," she said.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***