'Baby Be-Bop': Burning a gay book?

Nothing like a good book burning to stir up a debate on free expression, said Alison Flood in the Guardian. A group of Christians in Wisconsin is suing for the "right to publicly burn a copy of" Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, a gay teen coming-of-age novel. The lawsuit comes after a court threw out a request by a West Bend, Wisc., group to pull books they deemed to be sexually explicit off of library shelves.

It's hard to believe "we are still plagued by book burning religious zealots" in the 21st century, said Micha Jaystone in Examiner.com. At least this campaign by some West Bend, Wisc., scolds to "restrict access to teenage books they deemed sexually explicit" was tossed out of court recently—hopefully, this "frivolous" book-burning lawsuit will be, too.

Nobody wants to ban legitimate literature, said the West Bend citizens blog Wisconsin Speaks Up. We're simply asking "for a balance of information and simple identification of sexually explicit books for minors." In fact, "religion, morality, politics, even pornography, have little to do with this matter"—we just want to "protect" our children "from inappropriate material in the public library."

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