By: Rod Swift
Re: Bigots destroy books!

The Christians have decided to start destroying books because they may
just happen to show gay people as *real* and *existent* and not *stig-
matised* as their religious dogma perpetrates.  There may have been
cause to remove the 400 explicit books of all different natures, but
not destroy the remaining (approx.) 29,600... --

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THE NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT, March 4, 1997
150 W. Brambleton Avenue,Norfolk,VA,23501
Fax 804-446-2051, E-Mail:   letters@infi.net

Hertford school destroys 30,000 donated books with gay titles mixed in
BY ANNE SAITA, The Virginian-Pilot

   WINTON -- Lynell Eure was waiting to use the restroom in the girls' locker
room at her granddaughter's elementary school when she eyed an open carton of
books.

   She leaned over and picked up a paperback. Her heart --  and thoughts --
started
racing.

  In the Winton woman's hands was a copy of ``The Gay Handbook,'' the cover
illustration leaving little doubt as to its sexually explicit contents.

 ``I thought, `Oh my God! What in the world is this doing here? This is
trash! Why is this stuff here with our children?' '' Eure said Monday, a few
days after the discovery.

  Hertford County Public Schools officials are asking those same questions
after destroying up to 30,000 donated books -- 400 with dicey titles and the
rest approved for public consumption.

  About 35 volunteers spent eight hours Sunday carting truckloads of books to
a county trash dump, where they were put in a compactor, then buried.

  ``The reason why I decided to take this drastic measure was because people
were saying they wanted all these books out of the school by Monday, because
some were filled with inappropriate materials,'' Schools Superintendent
Andrew Carrington said Monday.

  ``Maybe we took the extreme, but we wanted to err on the side of caution,''
Carrington said. ``We wanted to safeguard the interests of our children and
our community, and we thought it best to do it this way.''

  The uproar began on Friday, when Eure and a friend discovered explicit
books on homosexuality in  the locker room at C.S. Brown Elementary School,
which houses pre-kindergarten through fifth-graders.

  The women, who had been at the school for a Black History program,
immediately contacted a school board member, who, in turn, called in school
system administrators.

  Similar books on gay and lesbian issues also were found among dozens of
boxed books stacked in the school's gymnasium and lobby. The books were to be
distributed to schools, libraries and colleges throughout the Roanoke-Chowan
region.

  The boxes of Penguin Classics paperbacks -- which reportedly included
cookbooks, history books, contemporary novels and sports stories -- were
donated to the school system by a national organization for dropouts that
routinely gives surplus books and other supplies to needy communities.

  The gifts come with a disclaimer that some materials may not be suitable
for communities and may be destroyed, said Dr. Ronald Lewis, who helped
arrange for 57,000 books and art supplies to be donated to the Hertford
County school system through the non-profit Communities In Schools, based in
Alexandria, Va.

   Carrington said about 400 objectional books earlier had been removed from
batches by a 30-member media advisory committee of mostly librarians and
educators.

  The questionable books were being stored in a room at Brown Elementary
until school officials decided their destination. Someone apparently broke
into the storage room and circulated the controversial books in the
community.

  `We started getting reports that students had books. I'm asking people to
give us the names of students, but so far we have not had any names come
forth,'' Carrington said. ``We are doing an extensive investigation.'' Eure
said she believes the censored books have been read by students for months,
based on what one 16-year-old told her as the books were being removed on
Sunday.

   ``One young man asked me, `Have you removed those nasty books from the
gym? Those nasty books -- I've been reading them since October.' He was
nonchalant about it,'' Eure said.

  Carrington and Assistant Superintendent James Robinson said they've
received calls from people wondering why so many decent books were dumped.

  ``They wish that we had waited and kept the books and gone back through
them,'' Carrington said. ``They think a small group of people has caused a
major issue in the county.''

   Despite complaints, the superintendent stood by his decision.

   ``We didn't want to have books show up later on,'' he explained.
``Somebody put these books back into the stacks, and they should not have
been there. We wanted to make sure it didn't happen again.''

  The mass destruction was a first for the Hertford County School system, as
well as Communities In Schools, which coordinated the gift-giving with two
other nonprofit groups, World Vision and Feed The Children.

   Communities In Schools began in Harlem in the early 1960s and now has
chapters
in 28 states and England, with near plans to expand into South Africa, Lewis
said.
     ``And we haven't had this problem anywhere in the world except Hertford
County,'' he said.
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