An e-mail newsletter chronicling censorship incidents and attempts in public school classrooms and libraries. People For the American Way Foundation. AIDS is a gay disease that has spilled over into our society. The local paper editorialized against the actions of the minister, prompting him to preach about the controversy in his Sunday sermons, which are also televised on a local station.
He compared banning the books with censoring material on pedophilia and the censorship of cigarette advertising. The newspaper ran letters to the editor on both sides of the controversy for over two weeks. A former Wichita Falls resident and pastor wrote, "As a Christian, I find it reprehensible that any other Christian would want to suppress the information found in books that validate the imago die image of God into which all people were created.
The meeting was reportedly marked by shouts and grumbles from the crowd; one woman even had to be escorted to her seat by a police officer after she took the floor out of turn.
At the beginning of the meeting, there was a fifteen-minute period of public testimony on the books. After the vote, one board member defended her votes to keep the books, saying, "I am a mother. I am a grandmother and a great- grandmother. I feel I can help my children understand the lifestyles of other people. And, may I say, I am a Christian. Believe it or not, I am. She decided to move both books to the juvenile section, which is intended for older children. She explained that moving the books to the adult section would invite children to search among other adult titles.
The campaign to ban the books promises to continue. Ironically, the effort to remove the books has resulted in an increase in copies available to the public. The library was swamped with requests for the books, which meant that according to policy, more copies had to be purchased. In addition, by the end of the standoff, citizens supportive of the two books had donated 22 copies of each. Last edited: December 05,
