Burn Baby (Be-Bop) Burn: Christian Group Files to Seek Right to Burn Book

The Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) has selected a curious place to put together an old-fashioned book burning: a court. In West Bend, Wisconsin, Christians are upset over a book called Baby Be-Bop and other books contained in the “Young Adult” material that they say are sexually explicit and inappropriate. In a 9-0 vote, the library trustees refused their demands to remove or restrict the material at the West Bend Community Memorial Library.

Irate Christian activists Ginny and Jim Maziarka have been fighting for four months to cleanse the library and Robert C. Braun of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) has distributed copies of a claim for damages he and three other plaintiffs filed April 28 with the city. They are demanding $120,000 in compensatory damages for each plaintiff for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for “allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.”

They insist that the book by Francesca Lia Block is “explicitly vulgar, racial, and anti-Christian” and that “the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library.” They are reportedly seeking the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop.

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