Florida County Library Lifts Ban on “Fifty Shades of Grey”
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — A Florida county’s public library system has lifted its ban on the controversial erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey.
The Brevard County Library System had pulled copies of the racy tome, and the two subsequent books in the trilogy, from its shelves earlier this month.
In a March 4 interview with The Palm Beach Post, Cathy Schweinsberg, the library services director, said the book did not meet the system’s selection criteria.
“Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves,” she said. “But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”
But in a statement released Monday, the library system said it would immediately restock its 19 copies of the books in the trilogy in response to public demand.
“Earlier this month, a decision was made to pull Fifty Shades of Grey from our libraries as a result of published reviews and our own initial analysis of the book and its controversial content. Since then, we have begun a review of our selection criteria and that review continues even as the decision has been made to supply the book in response to requests by county residents,” the statement read.
“We have always stood against censorship,” Schweinsberg said in the statement. “We have a long history of standing against censorship and that continues to be a priority for this library system.”
Fifty Shades of Grey is the first in a best-selling trilogy by British author E.L. James. The books focus on the relationship between protagonists Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, and explicitly detail the pair’s sadomasochistic sexual encounters.
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