Libraries Remove Gay-Themed Book At Beck Group Member's Request

A member of Glenn Beck's 9.12 Project succeeded in getting an award-winning book of essays by gay teens removed from a New Jersey public library and a local high school library after a library director referred to it as “child pornography.”

The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, N.J., reports that the “gay-themed book, which was pulled from a local high school's library after a resident objected to its content, has also been yanked from Burlington County's library system.

”The county system's decision to remove 'Revolutionary Voices,' an anthology of first-person works by gay youths, was made quietly in the spring. But it's now stirring an online furor with the release of e-mails on the issue by the county's library director, Gail Sweet."

The complaint was made in the spring by Beverly Marinelli, a member of the local 9.12 Project, who discussed the issue with the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time. E-mails between Sweet and Marinelli, as well as those between Sweet and library staffers, were just released following an ACLU FOIA request.

“How can we grab the books so that they never, ever get back into circulation?” Sweet asked in one e-mail to a library employee, according to the paper. “Copies need to totally disappear (as in not a good idea to send copies to the book sale).”

Sweet, in another e-mail, also referred to the book as “child pornography.”

“We have concerns (over the book's removal),” Jeanne LoCicero, deputy legal director for the ACLU-NJ, told the paper. “She said 'Revolutionary Voices' had faced no official challenge at the library and the library's commissioners had not voted on its removal, according to information in Sweet's e-mails.”

Talking Points Memo, which also reported on the issue, provides a link to the e-mails HERE