Two Real Page Turners
by Pat Arnow
In These Times

The guardians of morality found a straightforward way to curb sexuality in a
pair of books recently--they just ripped out the pages.

Anti-abortionist Randall Terry exhorted listeners to his syndicated radio
show in August to go to their local Barnes & Noble bookstores and tear up books
featuring photos of young nude girls. He targeted books by photographer Jock
Sturges, whose work Terry considers child pornography.

By mid-September, Terry's Windsor, N.Y., organization, Loyal Opposition,
reported that concerned parents had protested at 28 bookstores. A patron
complaint about Sturges' books at a Border's bookstore in suburban Pittsburgh
persuaded the federal prosecutor to look into child pornography charges.

Vic Walczak, director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Pittsburgh,
defends the books. "Simply depicting nude children is not and should not be a
crime," he says. "There is a lot of illegal child pornography out there where
children are being harmed. Focus on that problem, which really is a problem, not
on this, which is art."

Sturges has faced trouble before. In 1990, the FBI confiscated 100,000 prints
from his home in San Francisco. All of the attention on Sturges' work has
resulted in robust sales. "It's ironic, when somebody is trying to stop sale of
a title, that draws people's attention to the title, and it impacts sales," says
Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Lisa Herling.

Seemingly taking a page from Terry's playbook, a Franklin County, N.C.,
school board ordered sex education chapters cut out from a health textbook in
September. A volunteer took a razor blade to pages on marriage, parenting,
sexual behavior, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases.

Students around the state have been using Making Life Choices: Health Skills
and Concepts for several years, but a state law has now taken effect that
mandates that all school districts teach abstinence until marriage. A local
board-appointed committee recommended abandoning the health text because the
book advocates abstinence until the student is ready rather than married and
uses the word "partner" instead of "spouse." Since teachers wanted to use the
textbook for other sections in the health course, the committee excised only
three chapters.

Local opposition was unable to stop the page-cutting. Bunn High School
principal Wayne Wilbourne describes the event as "shades of 1936 Germany," and
at least one local doctor, who saw five teen pregnancy cases last month, says
the state's new policy is a bad idea. "Obviously, the 'Just Say No' stuff ain't
working," Dr. Al Sayles told the Raleigh News & Observer. "And the kids are just
so uninformed, it's scary."

October 20, 1997 / November 2, 1997, Vol. 21; Pg. 10

Back to Clips' Directory