'Civil liberties' group sues to publicly burn library book

One of the books that started all the fuss.

There's such a thing as diluting a franchise beyond all meaning. For instance, when you have the words "civil liberties" in your organization's name and you find yourself suing for permission to confiscate and burn a library book, you've probably watered the term down beyind recognition. That's the case in West Bend, Wisconsin, where the Christian Civil Liberties Union is building on the efforts of two local residents in an attempt to seize and publicly destroy the local library's copy of the coming-of-age novel, Baby Be-Bop.

The book apparently excited the ire of local residents Ginny and Jim Maziarka with its treatment of a 16-year-old boy's growing awareness of his homosexuality. Fair enough. Most folks who find that topic icky or uncomfortable would be satisfied with putting the book back on the shelf and steering their own kids elsewhere. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

But the Maziarkas apparently decided that anything that offended them should be placed off-limits to everybody else. As the American Library Association summarizes the situation:

After four months of grappling with an evolving challenge to young-adult materials deemed sexually explicit by area residents Ginny and Jim Maziarka, library trustees voted 9–0 June 2 to maintain the young-adult collection as is “without removing, relocating, labeling, or otherwise restricting access” to any titles. However, board members were made cognizant that same evening that another material challenge waited in the wings: Milwaukee-area citizen Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) distributed at the meeting copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city; the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.”

The West Bend Community Memorial Library, which was named Wisconsin Library of 2001 by the Wisconsin Library Association, hasn't exactly folded. The library still lists a single copy of the novel as available to be borrowed from its young adult section.

If you're interested in the tenor of the debate over the issue, here's a video segment presenting a bit of pro-burn testimony before the library board.

For more edifying insight into the pro-censorship position, Ginny Maziarka's blog can be found here. It's full of denunciations of the American Library Association and the important information that her group's objections extend beyond Baby Be-Bop to other books, including Brent Hartinger’s Geography Club, Stephan Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Esther Drill’s Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain and Life as a gURL. The blog also contains interesting assertions like this one: "In essence, censorship is the deletion of materials, ideas or information; therefore, when put in proper perspective, every time a librarian makes a decision about what books to buy, keep and throw, they are part of the editorial decision-making, i.e., censorship, process."

So, if librarians are engaged in "censorship," it must be a good thing. At least, her reasoning, should you care to follow it, wanders along those lines.

Hmmm ... So deciding, as the curator of a library collection, which books you will or won't keep on your shelves is the equivalent of suppressing works because of their content? Really?

To quote another work that the Maziarkas just might find offensive, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The same advice goes to the Christian "Civil Liberties" Union.

email J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com