Library Book Riles Small Wisconsin Town

June 19, 2009— -- There are 174,000 books in the West Bend Community Memorial Library, but Robert Braun, 74, of West Allis, Wis., just wants to burn one -- "Baby Be-Bop," by Francesca Lia Block.

"We will have demonstrations if they don't remove it," he said. "It has to be out of the library. If that doesn't happen, I will be out there burning."

Braun and three fellow members of the Christian Civil Liberties Union have filed a claim against the West Bend Library for stocking "Baby Be-Bop" in its young adult section. The book, which is about a teen struggling with his homosexuality, is "explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian" and is "inappropriate for the elderly and their minor grandchildren, and degrades the community," according to the complaint.

Braun said he found the homosexual content particularly offensive. "They call one character 'faggot' with every swear word you can think of ... and they use the N-word," Braun said.

The complaint asks for "damages and demand for relief pursuant to Wisconsin Statute Section 893.80." Specifically, the plaintiffs, only one of whom lives in West Bend, are asking for $120,000, and that West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss resign and the "racist book be removed and publicly burned or destroyed as a deterrent to repeating this offensive conduct."

But one person's vulgar book is another's "lyrical tale of love, faith and self-acceptance." At least that's how Publisher's Weekly described "Baby Be-Bop." The story centers on an adolescent boy named Dirk, who struggles with the knowledge that he is gay.

"This is a book about the pain that homophobia can inflict on a young person's life," said Larry Siems, director of the Freedom to Write Program at New York City-based PEN American Center, which advocates for free expression.

"This is a particular kind of theater to ask the courts to sanction a book burning. ... I think their position is so fundamentally un-American. This is not a country that burns books. The plaintiffs in this suit are elderly and they were probably alive in World War II when the Nazis were burning books. Our country emphatically rejects book burning."