Today I read an article in American Libraries* about a situation where “groups of students and parents [...] staged rallies and presented some 85 books on homosexuality for inclusion in the libraries at 11 schools in the Fairfax County, Virginia Public School District.”
The reason that this article caught my attention was because all the books presented were “from a conservative Christian perspective” and part of a “nationwide campaign organized by the Colorado Springs, Colorado-based traditional values group Focus on the Family, which believes that sexual orientation is a changeable attribute.”
I will quickly sum up what happened: The books were not included because the coordinator of library information services for the district indicated that the librarians felt they already had a balanced perspective on the issue in their libraries and the books failed to meet selection criteria.
Of course in response the Focus on the Family group claimed censorship.
At this point I am not going to discuss the particulars of this case anymore because in many ways it becomes irrelevant to the rest of this post. However, it did bring up some questions that, as a librarian, I have been pondering all day.