Gay pride policies alarm librarians
Challenges to gay-themed displays have raised concerns that the mission of libraries to serve as a forum for the free exchange of ideas is threatened.
By JANET ZINK
Published July 17, 2005
TAMPA - When the Hillsborough County Commission voted last month to prohibit county government from promoting and acknowledging gay pride events, the move caused an outcry.
Commissioners, who passed the policy in response to gay pride book displays in local libraries, have been inundated with e-mails, letters and phone calls, many criticizing the vote. Local chapters of the NAACP, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and City Council members condemned the action.
More than 2,000 people marched from the library to County Center on a Sunday afternoon to protest the policy.
But the Hillsborough County Commission isn't the first government body to take action in response to gay-themed books and displays in libraries.
"We are seeing an increase in challenges to materials that have to do with gay and lesbian issues and an increase in legislation that addresses those kinds of materials in libraries," said Beverley Becker, director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom.
In 2001, the mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, ordered a gay pride book display removed from a library. A federal judge ordered it back on the library's walls.
This spring, Oklahoma legislators passed a resolution requiring that all gay-themed materials be shelved in adult book sections. Louisiana lawmakers introduced a similar resolution that failed.
The last legislative session also saw a law introduced in Alabama that would have forbidden the expenditure of state money on any materials that portrayed a gay lifestyle as acceptable, Becker said. That resolution failed.
In the past two years, she said, dozens of challenges have been filed with libraries against King and King, a children's book about two princes who fall in love and get married. (The book is on the shelves at public libraries in Brandon and South Tampa.)
The trend has alarmed librarians, who say their institutions are supposed to be bastions of free speech and a source for infinite viewpoints, Becker said.
"Public libraries are a particularly American institution, intended to ensure an informed electorate and to serve as a forum for the free exchange of ideas that is required in a democracy," wrote Nancy Pike, president of the Florida Library Association, in a letter asking the Hillsborough County Commission to reconsider its policy.
The Friends of the Library of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library wrote commission chairman Jim Norman, saying the county's policy makes it "difficult, if not impossible," for the library system to fulfill its mission.
"How are horizons to be broadened if displays that serve to broaden horizons are not permitted?" wrote the group's president, Karen McClure. "It is not possible to truly serve as an educational institution when displays featuring current issues and related books are against government policy."
At its annual meeting in June, the American Library Association passed a resolution reaffirming its belief that local libraries are "promoters of the American values of inclusiveness, tolerance and mutual respect" and obligated "to disseminate information representing all points of view on the topic of gay rights."
"Once information is limited in one group, it's only time before they try to limit information on some other group. That's our fear," said Steve Stratton, a member of the Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Transgender Roundtable of the American Library Association, which sponsored the resolution along with the Intellectual Freedom Roundtable.
"The library really does have a responsibility to serve everyone, and it is not just the most powerful citizens in the community or even the majority," Becker said. "The First Amendment is there to protect the minority. The majority doesn't need that protection."
Others disagree with the American Library Association's stance.
"I don't think libraries are obligated to promote all points of view," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Family Institute of Concerned Women for America, a conservative public policy group based in Washington, D.C.
"A tax-supported library has no business promoting dangerous and unhealthy activities. They should no more celebrate homosexuality than bring in a display showing the joys of cocaine," he said.
Hillsborough County commissioner Ronda Storms made the proposal that the board passed 5-1. She has said that as the mother of a 6-year-old daughter, she does not want to be forced to explain homosexuality if her child passes such a display and starts asking questions.
"The commissioners are courageous in caring more about protecting kids than worrying about being accused of being politically incorrect," Knight said. "Kids are the primary concern because they're impressionable."
"It's not about treating people equally; it's about promoting a lifestyle," said Mat Staver, president and general counsel for the Liberty Counsel, a conservative, nonprofit law firm with headquarters in Orlando. "I don't think a government organization should promote gay pride," he said.
Library displays with gay themes, he said, "would be very offensive to parents having to be confronted with those kind of messages at the taxpayers expense."
The American Library Association, Becker said, won't weigh in on the controversy in Hillsborough County.
"We find the most effective response is when it comes from the citizens," she said.
But the resolution passed in June, she said, should help local librarians talk to the government officials who want to restrict materials.
"We encourage the librarians to oppose that kind of activity because the library has a responsibility to serve everyone in the community, including the gay community," Becker said.
Hillsborough County library director Joe Stines said once the commission passed its policy, he had no choice but to remove two displays at the John F. Germany Library downtown.
He ordered a gay pride display removed at the West Gate Library, he said, because it didn't follow library policy. It hadn't been cleared by the committee that organizes library book displays and included pamphlets from outside organizations.
Stines said in that case, he would have made the same decision whether it was a display in October celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month or in February to recognize Black History Month.
But the downtown library displays, which had been approved by the library's programming committee in conjunction with gay pride events in June, clearly went against the County Commission's new policy.
"I work for the local taxpayers and their elected officials who give me direction," he said. "I couldn't deny the fact that (the displays) were pulled together in June and there were meeting rooms that had been booked for several author lectures and programs that had to do with gay pride."
Still, Stines, who has been a librarian for more than 30 years, said he doesn't see it as an act of censorship.
"If someone told me that I couldn't buy books on a certain area or that our meeting rooms could not be used by any group, I would have a big problem," he said.
But the policy, which specifically prohibits promoting gay pride, doesn't mean gay-themed book displays are verboten at the library, he said.
"It's purely directed at promotion of gay pride," he said.
Does that mean that in the future there could be a gay-themed book display?
Yes, he said.
Stines wouldn't speculate on what the library's programming committee might do when it meets in the coming weeks to plan book exhibits for the coming year.
But the possibility of a gay-themed book display not directly related to gay pride, he said, is "on the table."
Janet Zink can be reached at 226-3401 or jzink@sptimes.com