A library in Alabama has admitted it accidently labeled a children’s book as containing sexually explicit material because the author’s name is Gay.
The Huntsville-Madison Public library in Alabama accidently added a warning that the book may not be suitable for children after they added labels to all books that had the word “gay” in their title description or author’s name.
The children’s book Read me a Story Stella is written by author Mary Louise Gay. The library admitted it’s mistake after a wave of complaints about their new warning system.
Cindy Hewitt, the library’s executive director told CNN that the purpose of the labeling system was not to ban books with LGBTIQA+ content, but to give more information to parents to help them with their choices.
In recent months there has been flurry of calls for books with content about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to be removed from school curriculums and public libraries. The movement has also extended to Australia where several books have been reviewed by the Australian Classification Review Board.
Hewitt said her team’s attempted to provide better classification of materials was the complete opposite of the movement to ban LGBTIQA+ books. The library administrator said they were about protecting books.
The library staff had been using a list of concerns supplied by a lobby group called Clean Up Alabama but Read Me a Story Stella was not on their radar. It seems the library staff went one step further by labeling anything that had the word gay.
The children’s book is part of the popular Sam and Stella series where older sister Stella introduces her younger brother to reading. It’s been translated into many languages and sold over two million copies around the world.
OIP Staff
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