Burlco school board bans book on homosexuality

A Burlington County school board voted Tuesday night to pull a book depicting teenage homosexuality from its high school library shelves after protests from a local conservative group.

The Rancocas Valley Board of Education, which oversees a regional high school serving the Mount Holly area, was concerned that the book was too graphic for children, said school board member Jesse Adams.

"We felt, from an obscenity perspective, there were some things our children didn't need to see," he said. "We don't allow our children to curse in school, and we don't think this is something we should be promoting in the school."

The decision drew criticism from the majority of parents, students, and librarians assembled at the meeting.

"It's a parent's responsibility to monitor what their children are reading, not to tell other children what they can and cannot read," said Eileen Cramer, a mother and graduate of the high school.

The controversy began at a school board meeting in March when a group of 18 residents, who later identified themselves as part of the 9.12 Project, a nationwide government watchdog network launched by the talk-radio and television personality Glenn Beck, called for the banning of three books, all dealing with teenage sexuality and issues of homosexuality, said Superintendent Michael Moskalski.

The books are Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology; Love and Sex: 10 Stories of Truth; and The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities.

The board elected to review the volumes after consulting with its attorney, the South Jersey law firm Parker McCay. Moskalski said the firm advised that the school had the legal authority to ban books because of obscenity but not on political grounds.

At Tuesday's meeting, the school board voted unanimously to ban Revolutionary Voices but elected to allow the other two books to remain in the library.

Beverly Marinelli, a member of the local 9.12 group, applauded the decision but questioned why the books were allowed into the library in the first place.

"Where is the oversight on this?" she asked during the meeting.

The proposed ban carried with it political undertones. The national 9.12 group has called for the resignation of Kevin Jennings as assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools in the U.S. Department of Education. Jennings, who is openly gay, is the former head of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

In past weeks, the school district has received correspondence offering legal advice from national groups including the American Library Association and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil-rights group representing gays, lesbians, and people with HIV/AIDS, Moskalski said.

Maryann Lange, a mother of five in Lumberton with two sons at the high school, decided to read the books after hearing about the proposed ban.

She said that for the most part, the stories and material were sensible and in good taste, the sort of thing that might help teenagers struggling to figure out their sexuality. But certain sections of Revolutionary Voices, including a piece about a "gay porn star," Lange said, were distasteful and "without educational value."

"There's a lot of great stories in this book, but the trash they included," she said. "I spoke about it with my son's friend [who is gay] about how we could solve this. Maybe put it in an over-18 section."

One element of Revolutionary Voices that drew considerable attention in Burlington County was a drawing of one man bent at the waist with another man standing behind him. Most took that as a depiction of a sexual act.

The author of the book, Amy Sonnie of Oakland, Calif., said in an e-mail to The Inquirer this week that the drawing was actually a stock image of one man hiking a football to another.