A life-insurance salesman was ejected from a March 6 Mecklenburg County commissioner’s meeting after threatening to read aloud a passage from Women on Top about two women having sex that he found at a branch of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina.
Martin Davis has repeatedly complained about sexually explicit library books. An objection by commission chair Parks Helms resulted in a police officer stationed at the meeting twisting Davis’s arm behind his back as he stood at the podium during the open-microphone public session, according to the March 7 Charlotte Observer.
County officials reportedly cut the sound to viewers watching the live government-channel television broadcast during part of the exchange. Davis never read from the book and left without comment as the officer followed.
“The library has a certain responsibility to respond to patron concerns, and we regard Mr. Davis as a patron,” Director of Programming and Communications Rita Rouse told American Libraries March 8. “We have responded quite thoroughly to his concerns.”
Posted March 12, 2001.