Some two months after challenging the Cumberland County (N.C.) Public Library for offering age-neutral access to It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley and Going All the Way: Teenage Girls’ Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy by Sharon Thompson, Fayetteville resident Ed Hamblin has dropped his objection. After officials declined his request to require parental permission for children to see the books, Hamblin told the September 17 Fayetteville Observer-Times, “I had already said I don’t want them removed because of First Amendment rights.”
Hamblin is among several activists who have been trying to tighten the library’s open-access policies and to establish an external acquisitions committee. Stymied so far, Hamblin has asked state representatives Bill Hurley and Mia Morris to introduce legislation extending harmful-to-minors statutes to libraries, schools, and churches when the General Assembly reconvenes next May. “Other than guns or taxes, it’s one of the most controversial things you can get involved with,” Hurley noted about his reluctance.
Posted September 27, 1999.