After the Spotsylvania County (Virginia) School Board voted to remove books with “sexually explicit” material from school libraries, two members of the board recommended the district burn the book to keep them out of people’s hands, the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reports.
“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Rabih “Rob” Abuismail, a one-time chair of the 88th Legislative District Republican Party Canvass, said. Livingston Twigg, chimed in, saying he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”
One of the books they want burned is “33 Snowfish” by Adam Rapp, the 2004 winner of American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults. The novel, according to the publisher’s description, “takes us to the depths of human suffering – and then shows us the resilience of human spirit” by following three teenagers who fight sexual abuse, drug addiction and homelessness.
Abuismail said that he wanted school librarians to review the books on their shelves and remove anything that had information or depictions of sex or discussed LGBTQ issues. He believed that by having the books available to students, the librarians “would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ.”