The report of the eight-member committee acknowledged that Push “describes horrible experiences involving incest and emotional and physical abuse, and contains crude descriptions of sexual acts and bodily functions.” It goes on to state that the stark language was “a necessary element” in the first-person novel by Sapphire about an HIV-positive incest survivor who is a teen mother.
Asserting her determination to continue her fight against materials she considers sexually explicit, Taylor said in the October 5 Fayetteville Northwest Arkansas Times, “If [policy] can get changed here, it can get changed anywhere.” She added that she was consulting her attorney, Stephen Crampton of the American Family Association, regarding the committee report.
Meanwhile, school officials were forming a new reconsideration committee to review the sex-education book Deal With It!—another title that Taylor has challenged. Also being revisited is district policy on handling challenges to multiple titles because they contain the same subject matter, in the wake of Taylor identifying 70 books that she has told Superintendent Bobby New she plans to challenge.
Posted October 7, 2005.