An Evans, Colorado, mother has vowed to picket the Weld Library District after the board declined her request to pull the sex-education book It’s Perfectly Normal from the shelves. Jeannie McAllister defended her challenge at the board’s December 15 meeting by explaining that children’s “passions are aroused” by such books, putting youngsters at risk of developing a sexual addiction, according to the December 16 Greeley Tribune.
McAllister objected to the book after seeing two of her youngsters browsing through pages depicting condom use, sexual intercourse, and childbirth. Christian-bookstore owner Ray Grant, who is also a minister, has said he would picket the library in solidarity with McAllister, although neither had yet made any protest plans. “Libraries are not safe places,” countered Greeley resident John Bookman, adding that “the reason for that is there are ideas to be found.”
McAllister’s was the third request for reconsideration that trustees handled since mid-November. The two other titles, which were challenged in unrelated incidents and also retained, were The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun: A Parody and Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. Nancy Derby objected to the send-up of Braun’s “The Cat Who” series because the novel opens with Braun’s severed head floating in the toilet of a gay bar, and she wanted to protect her grandchildren, who are Braun fans, from coming across the book. Characterizing Arming America as “revisionist history,” complainant Jerry Hendrickson cited author Michael Bellesides’ resignation from an Emory University professorship in 1999 over allegations that he may have fabricated anti-gun research on which the book is based. For balance, trustees agreed to acquire an opposing title, Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and Law.
Posted December 19, 2003.