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Texas Veterans Mulch Books in Porn ProtestSome 15 protesters from the Houston-based group American Veterans in Defense of Democracy shredded several books October 8 belonging to spokesperson Jim Cabaniss as part of an antipornography demonstration held outside six branches of the Montgomery County (Tex.) Memorial Library System. Speaking from the back of a flatbed truck equipped with a wood chipper, Cabaniss explained the book mulching was “symbolic” of what he would like to do with some 70 titles in the library collection that he characterized as “filth and smut that have polluted our libraries.”Although Cabaniss has not revealed which books are on the list of 70 titles, AVIDD distributed a handout at the protests identifying a dozen “intellectually distasteful and morally decadent books in the children’s section.” Cabaniss also displayed at each protest site a copy of Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd, as an example of the kind of inappropriate material to be found in the children’s room, emphasizing that a 7-year-old boy had come across the book there. However, according to Library Director Jerilynn A. Williams, the book has always been shelved in the arts section of the general stacks. Williams, who has endured five years of challenges to MCMLS holdings and collection-development policies, told American Libraries that the boy who discovered Jack Cole and Plastic Man is the son of Mark Cadwallader, an antipornography activist running for a seat on the county Commissioner’s Court. “There’s no reason we should keep selecting books that contribute to the delinquency of children,” Cadwallader said in the October 10 Conroe Courier, adding that the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights “has infected library systems around the country.” Counterprotesters came to each of the AVIDD demonstrations. Ronald Brown, a World War II veteran, told the Courier, “When I was a kid there was smut out there but anyone with moral character wouldn’t look at it. If they want to find it, [kids] will find it whether it’s in the library or in a vault.” Posted October 14, 2005. |
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