Defending Gay and Lesbian Young Adult Literature.

Dr John B. Harer, Department of Library Science and Instructional Technology, East Carolina University, USA

Thomas (2007) says, “If we read to discover new worlds, we also read to find ourselves. For gays and lesbians, this act of discovery can be problematic: literature has so often excluded them.” This presentation proposal is based on this author’s research of censorship in the United States which found that 50% of all titles that had experienced censorship pressure in 2004 and 2005 and reported to the American Library Association had a gay positive theme, gay character, or were sex education works with objective/neutral coverage of sexual orientation, and 92% of those were books for children and young adults. This presentation will discuss the milieu libraries face in collecting and defending the ownership of this genre of, including: (1) the theoretical divide between opposing views on homosexuality, (2) societal trends that support or detract from tolerance of sexual orientation, and (3) literary trends in gay/lesbian themed young adult novels that influence collection development decisions. The paper will conclude with strategies for defending this genre against censorship with an emphasis on (1) the role of literature collections in providing a safe and supportive environment for all children, (2) appealing to tolerance through personal experiences, and (3) collection development and selection.

(Citation: Thomas, D. (2007) A place on the shelf. Library Journal, 132(8), 40-43.)

Dr. John B. Harer is a former member of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee and current chair of the North Carolina Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee. He is the author of Intellectual Freedom: A Reference Handbook, published by ABC-Clio, Denver, CO, in 1992 and co-author of Censorship of Expression in the 1980s: A Statistical Survey, published by Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, in 1994. Dr. Harer is currently Assistant Professor of Library Science at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.