The North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District Board of Education passed resolutions at its meeting Tuesday that will keep five LGBTQ+ on the shelves of its libraries.
The board, since September, heard from parents and those in the community seeking to ban five LGBTQ+ books: “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, “This Book is Gay” by Juno Dawson, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George Johnson and “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechel. Others spoke out against the ban.
The district’s Book Committee read and evaluated each book before voting 4 to 2 to recommend “This Book is Gay” be removed from the shelves, stating it was missing appropriate citations, presented unverified facts and questioned its appropriateness for high school students. It did not vote to recommend the removal of the four other books.
The board of education voted 7 to 2 against a resolution to remove “This Book is Gay” from library shelves. The committee also passed four resolutions that will keep the other four LGBTQ+ books on the shelves.
Board members Debra Bonomi, Glen Farbanish, Daniel Spanton, Robert Kirchberger, Bryan Chapman, Rion Hoffmann and Board President Jessica Viotto voted against the resolution seeking to ban “This Book is Gay.” Board members John Melick and Roger Straight voted in favor while three board members, Tara Marie Hintz, Shelly Crisologo and Kimberly Solino, abstained, stating they did not have enough information to vote.
No one spoke during the public portion of Tuesday’s meeting in favor of banning the books. Some 55 people attended the virtual meeting.
Max Moore, a transgender student in the district, said he read “This Book is Gay” and did not understand why the book committee deemed it too explicit for students.
“‘This Book is Gay’ is more or less a gay sex education,” Moore said. “It does an amazing job filling in the gaps that the school’s curriculum fails to in sex ed. We talked candidly and openly about wet dreams and masturbation with the language always centered around heterosexual students.
“If the board was willing to make a committee to remove this book, I challenge the board to convene a committee to write a sex education curriculum for queer students.”
Fellow student Jude Gepp, who is gender fluid, said “This Book is Gay” received the 2018 Garden State Teen Book Award, and was named on Booklist’s top 10 books for LGBTQ+ youth in 2015.
“Apparently, you’re considered (book) committee has quite the imagination, because it is recommended removing this learning opportunity for the district’s nearly 2,500 student readers,” Gepp said. “How did I, an ignorant youth, come across this information? I used the tools that this district has so generously supplied, our library research databases. Thank you for those resources.”
North Hunterdon Regional High School Librarian Martha Hickson said the committee’s report lacked facts to support the proposed ban.
“In the absence of data from your reconsideration committee, you should know some numbers first,” Hickson said. “The district copies of ‘This Book is Gay’ had been checked out 31 times since 2015, more than once every marking period.
“In comparison, Nicola Yoon’s ‘Everything, Everything,’ a best-selling novel that arrived the same year, has circulated only 19 times. The popularity of this book … demonstrates students’ interest in, and need for, the information.”
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Vashti Harris can be reached at vharris@njadvancemedia.com.