Damakant Jayshi
The Marathon County Library Board of Trustees on Monday voted to retain a title challenged by a patron while rejecting a call for adopting a rating system for books.
By a majority vote, the trustees accepted the review committee’s decision and decided to retain “Let’s Talk About it: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human,” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan in its current position.
The book was challenged on April 26 by a patron who asked library officials to reconsider it by adopting a rating system to limit access to some content. The patron had not asked to remove the book entirely.
Courts across the country have repeatedly dismissed lawsuits calling for the ban of books from schools and public libraries.
A reconsideration committee formed to review the book and ultimately recommended its retention on the library’s shelves as well as rejecting the call for the proposed rating system, deeming it a violation of library policies. After an appeal was filed against the decision, a subsequent committee reviewed the appeal and arrived at the same decision, according to a July 6 report by filed by Reid Rayome, Library Board Vice President.
In a unanimous decision, the committee rallied against a rating system and said that any rating adopted would be both subjective and arbitrary, and “adopting any book rating system could be viewed as an endorsement of the views of the rater(s).”
On Monday, a number of speakers addressed the matter during public comments.
Those who were in favor of keeping the book said removing it would be a violation of the First Amendment. Some speakers said it is a parent’s responsibility to regulate which materials their children can access at the library. Parental responsibility was emphasized by a committee last year in the course of reviewing two other challenged books.
“When a parent/guardian signs up for a child’s library card at the Marathon County Public Library, the parent/guardian acknowledges that they are responsible for determining what resources are appropriate for that child,” the committee wrote last year. “However, they cannot infringe on the liberty of other parents/guardians to determine what is acceptable for their children or to restrict access for any individual.”
On Monday, one speaker emphasized the point again. She termed it “wrong” and an example of “censorship” to deprive others of access to the book. She said parents have a right to do what they want to do in their home but no right at all to impose their choices on others. She also said the book had valuable content, including on sexting and how teens could avoid it.
Nationally, the book has garnered significant positive reviews for its frank discussion on “relationships, friendships, gender, sexuality, anatomy, body image, safe sex, sexting, jealousy, rejection, sex education, and more,” according to publisher Penguin Random House.
Other speakers on Monday asked the library to adopt a rating system. One speaker asked the board to imagine if they went to watch a movie with their children that had no rating – but contained sex scenes. “How would you react?” she asked.
In her reply to the patron who made the initial suggestion, Library Director Leah Giordano wrote that satisfying the request would violate the library policies.
“Although we understand your perspective in suggesting this, it would not be appropriate for the public library to implement,” Giordano wrote on May 23. “Creating and administering a rating system would imply that the library endorses some materials over others. The library, serving as an information source for all 130,000+ residents of Marathon County, must remain viewpoint neutral.”
Referring to the oft-cited example of ratings of movies and DVDs, Giordano said any materials in the library that already contain a rating, such as a DVD, “are given their rating by outside organizations or publishers before we purchase them for our collection.”
During the discussion on Monday, a board member asked if they could get an opinion from Marathon County Corporation Counsel Michael Puerner on the legalities of adopting a rating system and whether such books can be shelved in a way that limits access to children.
The book challenge comes six months after an independent attorney’s report that the Marathon County Board violated First Amendment protections by threatening to reduce funding over a book ban controversy. This was on top of a warming by counsel Puerner that trying to penalize the library or its trustees could expose the county to lawsuits. Some members had proposed major cuts in the library funding and taking action against the Library Board of Trustees for not acceding to their demand to ban or reshelve some books they deemed pornographic.
Both Puerner and county board chair Kurt Gibbs warns against it, saying those actions could expose the county to “significant liability.” A majority of supervisors ignored the warning, and refused to approve the terms of the former library board president and one county supervisor who served on the library board.
Book ban attempts across the country have not abated. Supporters of access to challenged books have said those attempts suppress ideas.
“The people of Marathon County deserve a library where they are free to encounter and explore new ideas and viewpoints and have access to knowledge,” Board Member and Executive Committee Member, ACLU of Wisconsin, Tricia Zunker, told Wausau Pilot & Review. “Banning books is unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment right to receive and share information and ideas. This holds true especially in libraries, which exist to enable people to encounter and explore different ideas, topics, and viewpoints. We all have a right to read free from viewpoint-based or partisan censorship.”
Library Board President, Kari Sweeney, Vice President Reid Rayome and trustees Gary Gisselman and LeeAnn Podruch voted in favor of the committee’s decision. Trustees Becky Buch and Brent Jacobson voted against. Trustee Andrea Sheridan was absent.
