Texas Commission Tries to Ban
It’s Perfectly Normal
Despite the lack of a formal challenge, Montgomery County, Texas, commissioners ordered the immediate removal of It’s Perfectly Normal from county library shelves August 26. The directive was issued after some 12 area residents appeared at a commission meeting to decry the often-challenged sex-education book. “This book promotes homosexuality and abortion,” Conroe resident Monte Lane told officials. In apparent agreement, commission member Alan Sadler asserted that It’s Perfectly Normal “clearly tries to steer the child toward being pro-homosexual or at least neutral,” according to the August 27 Conroe Courier.
Library Director Jerilynn Williams, who had been present at the morning meeting to discuss a $10-million capital bond issue slated for the November election, talked with the concerned citizens as well as Sadler. By late afternoon, all sides had agreed that the book would remain in the young-adult nonfiction section pending a reconsideration-committee review once someone files a formal complaint. Williams told the August 27 Houston Chronicle that the residents had been unaware of the library’s reconsideration process.
The commissioners have a history of swift decision making regarding library matters: In March 2000 they instructed Williams to have filters installed on every public Internet machine in the five-branch system.
Posted September 2, 2002.
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