N.J. Library Keeps Explicit Books, Sex Guides Available to Children

By Hudson Crozier

What’s happening: A public library in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, recently rejected a request that six books containing explicit sexual content be removed or relocated so that they’re out of children’s reach. This ended a lengthy conflict between the conservative advocacy group making the request and the LGBT activists resisting it.

How bad were those books? Books You Know, Sex and It’s Not the Stork! offer written or visual guidance on masturbation. This Book Is Gay and Here and Queer explain gay sex and sex toys. Each book is marketed toward minors, and You Know, Sex was found in the children’s section of the Glen Ridge Public Library.

It gets worse: This Book Is Gay encourages minors to seek out orgies and other sexual activity with strangers and to use dating apps like Grindr, which is frequently used by adult predators to solicit and traffic children. All Boys Aren’t Blue is a memoir marketed for teens that depicts sexual intercourse, masturbation, oral sex, incest, and child molestation throughout multiple scenes. It’s Perfectly Normal contains illustrations of nudity, sexual intercourse, and masturbation.

No compromise: Dozens of activists and protesters viewed the proposed relocation or removal as an attack on LGBT identity. It has become a mainstream position on the left that making this material available to kids is about free expression and restricting it is a form of discriminatory censorship. In this case, the library chose to keep the books and leave them where they are, which follows a nationwide trend of schools and libraries refusing similar requests.