Commission Chairman Jim Norman took up the issue out of agenda order to avoid having too many people in the room. “I did not want any at-risk situations to occur,” he said in the July 21 St. Petersburg Times. Kathy Castor, the only member to vote against the ban in June, said at the meeting that the ban likely violated a 1984 state statute giving library boards the sole authority to create library policy. Former Commissioner Jan Platt, who helped write the statute and was also present, agreed, saying the intent of the law was to take library content “out of political hands.”
Commission members listened silently as some 20 visitors voiced their disapproval of the policy before ending public comment and accepting McClure’s letter, according to the July 21 Tampa Tribune. Outside the building, about 40 others unaware of the agenda switch rallied with rainbow flags as Bart Birdsall, a Greco Middle School librarian who is gay, used a bullhorn to read from books appearing in a gay-themed library display that had prompted the commission’s ban in June.
The Florida Library Association announced July 21 that its executive board had passed a resolution by electronic vote not to hold any official meetings in Hillsborough County until commissioners rescind the policy. FLA President Nancy Pike had sent a letter to the commission June 23, saying that librarians are “ethically committed to representing multiple points of view and we firmly believe that representing all of the diverse expressions of life in our communities is our responsibility and is protected by the First Amendment.”
“Economics is really the only way you’re going to get anything to change,” agreed school librarian Martin Sicard in the July 22 Tribune. Sicard was one of some 20 area educators who staged a silent read-in protest July 21 at the library’s West Gate branch, where a gay-pride display was removed after the board adopted its policy.
Posted July 22, 2005