The Fairhope Public Library Board of Trustees voted Monday night to move five books out of sections for minors into adult sections.
The board reviewed 14 books in all after Nehemiah “John” Wahl, chair of the Alabama Public Library Service executive board, asked it to reconsider all challenged books to factor in changes to the APLS administrative code.
The APLS board voted hastily in May to halt the library’s funding for failing to move “sexually explicit” books out of sections for minors. Ron Snyder, who represents Fairhope within his district on the board, called the vote “highly inappropriate.”
The board voted Monday to move “Boy Toy,” “Tricks,” “Damsel,” and “The Haters” from the teen section to general (adult) fiction. It also voted to move “Sex is a Funny Word” from the juvenile nonfiction to the parenting section.
The board chose to keep the other nine challenged books in the teen section: “Beyond Magenta,” “Crank,” “Doing It,” “Identical,” “Lighter Than My Shadow,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Hate U Give,” “Like a Love Story,” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
The board previously voted to keep the books “Sold” and “Grown” in the teen section as well.
The APLS board could decide next month whether it is satisfied with the decisions made by the Fairhope board, or whether it will consider them to remain in violation of state code, which states that “sexually explicit” materials and other materials “inappropriate for minors” should not be shelved in sections for individuals under 18 years of age.
The APLS board voted on a definition of “sexually explicit” at its last meeting, although its unclear whether that definition is binding since it is separate from the text of the administrative code.
That definition considers sexually explicit to mean:
“any visual, written, or audio content that depicts or describes sexual conduct, including:
- Sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or anal-anal contact, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex;
- Sexual excitement;
- Nudity;
- Bestiality;
- Masturbation;
- Sadistic or masochistic abuse; or
- Lascivious exhibition of the anus, genitals, or pubic area of any person.”
APLS Board member Amy Minton has also put forward a resolution to define any materials “promoting gender ideology” to be considered “inappropriate for minors.”
Fairhope board chair Anne Johnson said reviewing the books felt like the sword of Damocles was above her, “because whatever we do will be a problem.”
Johnson also made it clear that the board reviewed the books based on the library’s own policies, which the APLS has said are in compliance with state code, and emphasized that the threshold for “sexually explicit” under that policy is a book “appealing to the prurient interest of minors,” meaning it is intended to sexually arouse. She said none of the books she read met that threshold.
