by Mel Green

Banned Books Week is an annual  celebration of the freedom to read, while simultaneously pointing out the dangers of censorship by spotlighting books challenged and often actually banned from libraries in the U.S. This year, Banned Books Week runs from September 24 to October 11. As usual, books challenged for LGBT content or themes are well-represented.

According to the American Library Association, from 2001 to 2010, at least 4,660 challenges to books in American libraries were documented:

• 1,536 challenged as “sexually explicit”
• 1,231 challenged due to “offensive language”
• 977 challenged as “unsuited to age group”
• 553 challenged because of “violence”
• 370 challenged because of “homosexuality”
• 304 were challenged because of their “religious viewpoints”
• 121 challenged as “anti-family”

“Homosexuality” was cited at the reason for challenging books 892 times from 1990 to 2010 — the seventh most common reason cited for challenging books in the U.S. during that time period.

The most challenged title of 2010, And Tango Makes Three (2005), is an award-winning children’s book by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson and illustrated by Henry Cole. It’s based on the true story of two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who pair-bonded for six years and, during those years, successfully raised a female chick named Tango in New York’s Central Park Zoo. (When Tango became an adult, she pair-bonded with another female penguin named Tanuzi for at least two breeding seasons.) And Tango Makes Three was also the most challenged book of 2006, 2007, and 2008, and the second most challenged book of 2009.

Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson read a passage from the book as part of the Banned Books Week Virtual Read-out.

Watch:

Another of the 10 most frequently challenged books in 2010: Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology, edited by Amy Sonnie. Published in 2000 by Alyson Publications, Revolutionary Voices is anthology created by and for radical queer youth of color, young women, transgender and bisexual youth, (dis)abled youth, and poor/working class youth. In 2001 it was a finalist for the 13th Annual Lambda Literary Awards in two different categories —  anthologies/nonfiction and children’s/young adult.  In 2011, one attack on it let to the awarding of a Jeffersons Muzzle Award to Gail Sweet, Director of the Burlington County (New Jersey) Library System. The Jefferson Muzzles have been awarded annually by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression to call “attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson’s admonition that freedom of speech ‘cannot be limited without being lost.’”  Gail Sweet earned the award for ignoring proper library policy on how to deal with controversial books, and unilaterally banned the Revolutionary Voices from the entire library system:

When Beverly Marinelli, a member of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, complained that this collection of essays, Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology—written by LGBT youth describing the personal and familial struggles of their coming-out experiences—was “pervasively vulgar, obscene, and inappropriate,” Gail Sweet, the Library Director of the Burlington County system, ignored the established policy in favor of a sweeping ban of this book, such that it was no longer available to any patrons, not even to adults.

Although many consider this anthology to be a uniquely poignant first-person resource for teens grappling with questions about their own sexuality, Marinelli is well within her rights in challenging the book’s presence in her public library system. However, Sweet circumvented the formal process in favor of an immediate prohibition of Revolutionary Voices from the entire system. In an email, Sweet conceded that “[t]here was no official challenge, no actual vote by the commissioners.” She justified the swift decision by classifying Sonnie’s anthology as “child pornography,” but this is not a classification that is hers alone to make; there is a formal process for complaints, a process that Sweet chose to sidestep. Other community members and library staff have a right to contribute their voices to a formal debate regarding the book’s availability.

According to “Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2011,” a map based on cases documented by American Library Association and the Kids’ Right to Read Project, only one challenge to a book in Alaska was documented: in 2011 Betrayed was challenged in North Star Borough School District high school libraries because, according to its challenger, “It simply causes kids to think even more of things sexual.” Betrayed is the second book in the House of Night series, vampire-based fantasy novels by mother-and-daughter writing team P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast.

But while not “challenged,” an attempt in 2008 to donate two early LGBT children’s books — Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s Roommate — to Wasilla Public Library was met with rejection, amid questions about why local pastor Howard Bess’ book Pastor, I Am Gay had also disappeared from the library.  At the same time, the Wasilla library retained a copy of And Tango Makes Three and other LGBT-themed books, according to a Library Journal interview with the library’s director at the time.

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association; the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Library Association; the American Society of Journalists and Authors; the Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores.  It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. In 2011, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; and PEN American Center also signed on as sponsors.