Fundamentalists all atwitter

AUGUST 1981 HIGH GEAR page 7

Our Bodies, Ourselves under attack

Reprinted with permission of GAY COMMUNITY NEWS, 22 Bromfield Street, Boston, MA 02108

By Jii Clark BELFAST, Maine-"Many parents believe that we can't ban the book because censorship is unconstitutional. Of course, censorship is not unconstitutional. Censorship is condemning something that's wrong. The Communist Manifesto is okay, that's not obscene. But this book is out and out pornography, advocacy of abortion and masturbation--including instructions on how to use a cucumber."

Those are the words of Marian Tucker-Honeycutt, a Belfast parent who, in the wake of a seven to three vote by the Belfast board of education in favor of keeping Our Bodies, Ourselves on the shelves of the local high school library, has launched a petition drive aimed at forcing the board to reverse its decision.

A controversy over sex education in schools has been smoldering here for over a year. Our Bodies, Ourselves, an award winning compendium of biological, medical and sexual information for and about women, is the most recent target of fundamentalists and others here who want to have more control over what information their teenagers can get hold of about sexuality.

Rev. James Evans called for the board's review of the book last fall when, warned by a Moral Majority mailing that it was being used as an educational tool in schools around the country, he discovered it in Belfast District High School. He said he objects to its "advocating" abortion, masturbation and premarital sex, its "sanctioning" of group sex and lesbianism, and its use of "gutter language" in talking

about sex.

At a special hearing held by the board of education on May 26, Evans showed excerpts from the book on an overhead projector, according to the Belfast Republican Journal.

"I'm not commenting on my feelings on these issues...I'm not trying to persuade you," Evans told the crowd of about 125 youth and adults. "Let your conscience be your persuasion." The pastor flashed a picture from the book of three lesbians with their arms around each other. "This book isn't just the facts of life."

According to Joseph Stearns, assistant superintendent of schools, the majority of residents who spoke up at the hearing wanted the book kept on the shelves "because they are against censorship."

Stearns added that "a surprising number of them must have bought the book for their own daughters. I saw an awful lot of copies floating around."

Evans said that his supporters were in the minority at the hearing "only because I told them beforehand not to bother coming to protest because it looked to them like the book wouldn't go back on the shelves."

Tucker-Honeycutt said that she has spoken to many parents the book at the

hearing who have since changed their minds.

Evans and Tucker-Honeycutt both allege that the overwheiming majority of Belfast area parents oppose the book's presence in the library and they believe that the majority will and should prevail.

Evans commented, "In a recent editorial in the Waterville Telegram, someone asked, 'Since when does the majority of people in this nation decide whateverybody's going to do?" I say, 'Since when have we done otherwise?' That's what democracy is all about."

William Davis, the viceprincipal of the high school, tends to agree with Evans. "I think it's a marvelous book," he said. "I don't object to anything in it that deals with non-controversial things like menstrual cycles. And I'm not much on censorship as a general rule of thumb."

"But," he continued, "I think that community standards come into play. In the library in the school in Connecticut where I was teaching before, we had books that wouldn't appear here. Theoretically education is under local control. If the board doesn't go along with the community, then change the board members."

Asked whether he thinks communities also have the right to racially segregate their schools, Davis said, "No, that's a whole different ball of wax. That gets into constitutionality. I think 'separate but equal' is wrong and un-American, if you want to use that term."

Norma Swenson, a member of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (BWHBC) which has been publishing the awardwinning book for ten years, fears that challenges like Evans' could result in "the downfall of the public school system."

"If many parents say, 'We don't want black students, or we don't want Our Bodies, Ourselves, and so we're going to start our own private school,' the next step will be petitioning their state government to direct tax money to those schools. Public schools will fall as racist, fundamentalist-

Christian academies rise."

Wendy Sanford, also of BWHBC, believes that the "real majority in this country supports abortion and a whole range of other issues, but they remain silent because they think those rights are secure."

However, a lesbian with a child in the Belfast school system told Gay Community News that most

people there do not support the book itself. "It's just that they support censorship even less, said the parent, who asked to

remain anonymous.

Does Sanford agree with viceprincipal Davis that the book should be removed from the

library if Evans and TuckerHoneycutt can prove that the majority of Belfast parents do not want it there?

"No. it's become a question of majority versus minority because the Moral Majority used those terms. But in fact it is a matter of individual freedom. If the majority were against abortion, I'd still believe in the right of a person who wanted one to have it."

Sanford added, "I think people are real scared of changing. Women getting in touch with their sexuality, whether heterosexual or lesbian, brings with it a tremendous amount of variety and freedom and power. Many people are afraid of that in their daughters as well as their own selves."

The anonymous parent who is involved in the controversy over the book added that there is "a desperate need for sex education here."

"Seventeen percent of all live births in Waldo County are to teenagers," she said. "I work in a factory and about half the women there are married by the time they are 16--to get out of the house."

She added that the incidence of venereal disease and incest are very high.

"People intermarry a lot--step brothers, cousins--probably because of the smallness of the community. Around 75 percent of the women that show up at Skyward, a program for women alcoholics, are victims of incest, not necessarily non-consenting. with uncles or step brothers or brothers. One woman had sex for years with her brother because that was accepted in her family and she thought that's what she was supposed to do."

Tucker-Honeycutt nevertheless feels that children and teenagers should be educated about sexuality at home.

"Family planning representatives came to a health class at the high school and told them, 'You're not really children, you're adults.' Now, what 15-or 16-yearold wouldn't love to hear that from an adult? But it creates a disciplinary problem at home and the one that is abused the most here is the child, because he needs a set of messages to hang on to until he is an adult, when he can correctly assimilate the information aid make choices."

She continued, "They (family

planning representatives) taught

a whole class on masturbation. A student asked, 'Is it okay?' They said, 'If it feels good, do it.' Now, I'm not saying I'm for or against masturbation, but they're interfering with family matters.

"Kids are being used as guinea

pigs at experimental laborato-

ries... When I think of all the valuable classroom time spent on these things, it's no wonder Johnnie can't read."

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Last spring a group of employees at local service agencies formed a group called Apple Corps and volunteered to present a series of Saturday workshops on sexuality to teenagers. When Evans learned that the topics to be discussed would include birth control, VD and homosexuality, he leafletted around the town. In response to community concern, Apple Corps agreed to present to parents a synopsis of all the material to be covered in the workshops.

According to the lesbian mother who spoke to Gay Community News, "The section on homosexuality was quite explicit. In a community where homosexuality is frowned upon so much, they should have been low key and presented statistics instead of what to do in bed and where to meet each other. That added fuel to Evans' fire. His big thing is homosexuality, anyway. As a result, Apple Corps workshops were canceled."

Residents, both conservative and liberal, concerned about problems surrounding teenage sexuality then formed a steering committee to ascertain teenagers' needs and organize workshops on teenage pregnancy and VD. he committee has strongly supported the retention of Our Bodie.. Ourselves in the library. "Jim vans was on the committee, constantly bringing up the subject o homosexuality, but he dropped off after he found he wasn't going to get his way there. He wants to altogether eliminate what little sex education we have in the schools--in fourth, seventh and ninth grades."

The controversy over Our Bodies, Ourselves can be traced back to Evans' receiving a letter circulated by the Moral Majority in Washington, DC, which exerpted sentences from the book and whited out words such as "penis" and "orgasm." The envelope read, "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIAL ENCLOSED. DO NOT LET THIS LETTER FALL INTO THE HANDS OF SMALL CHILDREN!" Inside, the reader was instructed: "destroy this sheet immediately after you've

read it."

The book has been attacked in approximately 35 towns around the U.S., according to Paula Doress of the BWHBC, including Milwaukee, Muskegon and Norway, WI; State College, PA, and Spencer, MA.

"In 1976, the American Library Association picked Our Bodles, Ourselves as the best book for young adults. The next year, they made us one of ten all-time best books for young adults. This brought the fundamentalists' attention to it.".

Doress said that the first spate of bannings was orchestrated by Phyllis Schaffly's Eagle Forum in 1977 and 1978, and that the Moral Majority began targeting it in 1979.

According to Judith Krug of the American Library Association's office for intellectual freedom, censorship reports to her office have tripled since last summer.

"We are living in an environment of helplessness and fearfulness." Krug told the Los Angeles Times recently. "These are plain, old American citizens who literally cannot cope with the society we live in today. There are so many tensions and complexities affecting us on a day-to-day basis. Yet we don't have the ability to have any effect back on them. When you walk into a grocery store and the price of your favorite jam has gone up ten percent, what do you do? We can't have any control over what happens to us and we don't understand it.

"As a result, people are groping for actions they can take," Krug continued. "So they spend their time on schools and libraries, because children and tax dollars are integrally involved in both. There is nothing that will increase the emotionalism of an American citizen more than money and children, particularly their own. So their feeling is: 'If I can protect my children, particularly when they are away from me, we may be able to cope better'."

-filed from Boston

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