Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is still under suspension by the Crook County (OR) School Libraries. A parent of a 14-year old objected to a description of masturbation in the award-winning YA book (like 14 year-olds don’t already know?)
About 60 people turned out Monday night to the Crook County School Board meeting and about 15 testified about the book. The board then voted 4-1 to continue the temporary suspension, while making the book available to students in the library. School Board Chairman Jeff Landaker was the lone vote against the motion to suspend and wait for further review.
“The reason I voted no is because this issue has already taken one month’s time,” Landaker said. “And it’s at a time when, in my opinion, we have more critical issues facing us. We have a financial situation where we’ve had to cut 10 days off the school year and are facing a million-dollar budget shortfall next year. Now, it’s going to take two month’s time to address this, and I think we need to move on.”
Report from the Bend Bulletin.
I wonder why this story was
I wonder why this story was previously removed? I thought censorship was bad – as evidenced by the above article. Apparently when people don’t like your opinion you can censor them? Is that what librarians believe.
Yesterday there was a a story posted about a church having swastikas painted on it because they have a tenent of their faith which some people nearby don’t agree with. These people terrorized the church members by vandalizing their church, painting swastikas and hate filled messages about their religious leaders. The Church, Most Holy Redeemer in San Francisco was damaged by opponents of Proposition 8, the law recently passed by California voters.
These criminals don’t respect the parishoner’s right to their beliefs, they don’t respect their right to their private religious practices, they don’t respect the law, they don’t respect the vote – unless of course your views agree with theirs. If your views are different you must be censored, your churches will be desecrated.
Removing a book at the request of parents from a childrens’ classroom is so terrible that it rates mention on LISNews, but the crimes against thought, expression, belief and the terrorist actions of Anti- Proposition 8 criminal extremists is scrubbed from this site, which has stated previously that it does not censor.
Shame on whomever removed it.