Author Fights Gay Book Ban in Tacoma, WA

As most of us stuffed Thanksgiving birds and prepared cranberry relish, novelist (and AfterElton.com contributor) Brent Hartinger found himself embroiled in a controversy swirling around his almost three-year-old novel Geography Club (HarperTempest 2003).

The saga of a gay high school sophomore (Russell Middlebrook) with a crush on a baseball jock, Kevin Land, whom he discovers to be gay, Geography Club is an awarded, critically-praised Young Adult tome about the impossible years. Among many honors, Geography Club was a 2003 Lambda Literary Award Finalist and a Booklist “Top Ten Best First Young Adult Novel.”

On Sunday, November 20, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Tacoma, Washington 's University Place School District had removed Geography Club from its library shelves following parents' complaints.

Superintendent Patti Banks said she was alarmed by the “romanticized” portrayal of a teen meeting a stranger at night in a park after first meeting the person--revealed to be a gay classmate-–in an Internet chat-room.

http://www.afterelton.com/print/2005/11/brent.html