“The proposal here today wasn't 'the' answer, it was 'an' answer,” Wichita Falls (Tex.) City Council member Bill Altman said February 2 after enduring the narrow 4–3 defeat of his proposal to establish a restricted area in the public library for children's books deemed offensive by a petition of 300 cardholders. Accordingly, Altman introduced an alternative proposal even before his original bill lost: Move controversial titles to the adult collection.
Council members wouldn't consider Altman's substitution that night lest they violate the Texas Open Meetings Act, but have placed it on their February 16 meeting agenda, the Wichita Falls Times Record News reported February 3.
Two days earlier, the newspaper published a guest editorial by 25 area ministers that argued against library restrictions because freedom “makes possible the religious and social pluralism which enables Christianity and all faiths in America to thrive.” Last summer, Rev. Robert Jeffress paid a library fine rather than return the gay-positive Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies.
Posted February 8, 1999.