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Gay Pride Display Downsized, DenouncedSeveral days after a Gay and Lesbian Pride Month display honoring gay authors was relocated from the foyer of the Tampa–Hillsborough County (Fla.) West Gate Regional Library to a less-trafficked space further inside the facility, the county commission was pondering whether the exhibit should have been shown there at all. “I do not want to have to explain to my daughter what it means to question one’s sexuality,” commission member Ronda Storms said during a June 8 budget hearing.Initially approved by library officials, the display was created by University of South Florida SLIS student Meagan Albright, who also works part-time at the West Gate facility. It was moved after officials received three complaints in as many days and is notably missing an accompanying poster that features famous bisexual, lesbian, gay, and transgendered people. “When I saw the [poster] I didn’t feel aesthetically it looked professional enough,” library spokesperson Patrice Koerper explained in the June 8 St. Petersburg Times, adding that the goal was to remove the poster but not the books since their covers “were all appropriate.” Albright, who originally prepared the display for an SLIS class, received an A on the assignment. Hillsborough Commissioner Storms, who in April persuaded her colleagues to consider modifying the library system’s acquisition policy regarding popular-culture DVDs, has vowed to get the issue of such displays on the library board agenda. Commission Chairman Jim Norman voiced agreement, noting the commission’s oversight of how library funding is spent. The lone opponent to pursuing the discussion was Kathy Castor, who asked her colleagues to refrain from “using this dais to promote discrimination,” the Times reported June 10. Posted June 10, 2005. |
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