The Joy of Gay Sex
To date my work has focused on book controversies in the past decade because I can get easy access to material through public record laws. As most institutions destroy records after 5-10 years, this method has a limit. Now I’m accumulating archival materials to try and broaden my data on challenges from earlier periods of time. In the ACLU of Western Missouri and Kansas* archives I discovered the details of a 1994 challenge to The New Joy of Gay Sex in Saint Joesph, Missouri. The most striking thing about this controversy is how little the logic of challengers to queer-inclusive materials has changed in the past 25 years.
The Joy of Gay Sex was first published in 1977 providing a sex manual for men who have sex with men, in many ways paralleling the groundbreaking Joy of Sex that straight folks had on their shelves for decades. In 1993 the second edition (hence the “new”) was released leading to an entire new generation of attempts to censor it. The book was purchased by many libraries, including the River Bluffs Regional Library which put the book on the new release shelf as it did with all new arrivals. Al Green discovered the book while looking for something else. He was not pleased.
Green concluded that The New Joy of Gay Sex “would be a shock to any person with decent morals.” Green argued that his concern was for the children “especially in this day and age, when morality is getting worse by the day.” Green checked out the book and refused to return it in order to protect the public from the immoral influence. (As an aside this had the effect of driving up demand as the library would note that it had a list of holds and would have to order new copies to replace the stolen one). Green initiated a petition that became a six month crusade against filth attacking one of the key tenets of the library profession.
The Library Bill of Rights drive librarian ethics. In Saint Joesph Article V would become the center of the controversy. George Sherman, a local newspaper columnist, attacked this provision vigorously. The language, intent, and interpretation of Article V has been consistent since it was amended in 1967 to add age to the provision: libraries will not limit minor’s access to material in the library, that is the job of parents. Sherman adopted a novel interpretation by arguing that it speaks only to use and not access to material. This argument would become central to the challengers’ drive. In fact, most of them tended to disclaim any concern for the homosexual content of the book. Though they happily described it as filth, disgusting, disturbing, and “a sick piece of sewage” as the colorful Sherman put it. Of course, no one bothered to challenge any other sex manual so their denials may have been more than a little hollow. And some weren’t shy about making the content the central complaint. One wrote into the local paper that this book “promote[d] the homosexual life style” and “[t]hese are the same folks that brought us AIDS and spread it to the heterosexual population through bisexuals and their contaminated blood supply donated or sold on the open market.” For the library to even purchase such material was a betrayal of the trust placed in it by the tax payers and the least it could do is restrict access to adults.
Challengers viewed the book as pornography. Challengers to sexual material often raise this claim: anything that instructs on sex is inherently about titillation and excitement. The fact that The New Joy of Gay Sex includes illustrations only made it worse. Challengers raised the specter of obscenity law frequently even citing the legal definition to question why the library would dare purchase such a book and more than one wondered why the library director had not been arrested. Challengers get hung up on the part of the obscenity definition that states it applies “contemporary community standards.” Columnist George Sherman did not like being called a censor and quoted a single line about urine play and opined, above, that this makes the book inherently obscene. This, of course, ignores the key component of obscenity law: that the book be judged as a whole. For Sherman and others of his ilk, no value could ever come from this single line and it pollutes the entire book, making it “sick.”
In sum this challenger discourse is broadly similar to what we see today. The book is sick and disgusting to a group of patrons who frame their primary concern about the protection of children. As a public institution, the library is seen as a reflection of the dominate will, it must assist parents and responsible adults in guiding children. The only means of doing so is to hide the book so that only adults, presumably already morally corrupted, can possibly locate it.
This controversy went on for about six months, spanning multiple library board meetings where challengers (and a few anti-censorship folks) spoke in excess of five hours total—and that doesn’t include any phone or written messages sent to the library. The press attention was fairly heavy. Ultimately the library refused to alter its policies in any way, reaffirming that access restrictions are the job of parents. The action on The New Joy of Gay Sex, however, was less positive. It technically retained the book but placed it behind the desk. The director justified this as necessary “[b]ecause of threats” from the challengers that they would destroy any copy they found and thus it was necessary to keep the book “in a non-public area, which means that it will be available by request only.” In a technical sense, the library stuck to its ethics by retaining the book and not putting an age requirement. In a substantive sense, however, I’m not so sure. I have no doubt that risk of damage was high, it generally always is with queer-inclusive content and we don’t see all of that rounded up and stuck behind the desk. This reads to me as a library sticking publicly to their guns while caving quietly to the challengers by giving them what they want. While I’m sure the director would object noting that the book was still not restricted by age, this ignores the reality that few gay teens would have the courage to walk up to the librarian and ask for the book by name. Thus, in a real world sense, teens (and probably some adults) were denied access to lifesaving information they received nowhere else.
* Unless otherwise noted all materials used in this post are archived at Box 24, Folder 53; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) - Western Missouri Records (K0398). The State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center-Kansas City.
