Missouri library will ban porn star book – after 20 people on waiting list read it

A Missouri library system will ban a book that critics are calling too sexually explicit – but they are allowing the 20 people on the book’s waiting list to read it first.

A committee with the St Charles city-county library system in eastern Missouri has moved to ban the book Bang Like a Porn Star: Sex Tips from the Pros, but will allow everyone on the book’s waiting list before 21 November to read it first, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

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Jason Kuhl, CEO of the St Charles city-county library, announced the committee’s decision in a statement on Tuesday. He said the book would be removed after the review committee found the book “[did] have explicit photographs that seemed unrelated to the text they should have been illustrating”.

Kuhl added that the book was initially purchased five years ago because “it was the only item readily available at the time about sexuality and sexual health for gay men”.

The 2018 book features interviews from gay adult film stars and covers a range of topics about sex acts and health including “providing oral pleasure”, “creating your own home sex video”, and how to remain sexually healthy, according to the book’s description. It was previously housed in the library’s adult section.

The library system only had one copy of the book before the book’s formal challenge, which Kuhl said had not “been publicly available for months” as it was never returned.

More copies of the book had to be purchased by the library’s review committee to review the initial challenge.

In September, critics argued for the book’s removal after claiming it was too sexually explicit for a public library. The formal request for removal was made through the library system’s request for reconsiderations process, which allows patrons to challenge material or ask for books to be rehoused in a different section.

Lori Beth Crawford, a spokesperson for the library system, declined to release the names of who filed the initial complaints to the Guardian, but noted there were only three in total for Bang Like a Porn Star.

Parents also publicly critiqued the book It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, Gender and Sexual Health, a 1994 book on puberty and sexual health for older children. The book has become one of the most banned in the past two decades, according to the American Library Association.

A formal request for removal was not made for It’s Perfectly Normal.

Crawford said that the library system has not seen an uptick in the amount of books being formally challenged, but that more people were using other channels such as writing letters to Kuhl and other board members to voice disapproval.

A petition for Kuhl’s removal has already garnered nearly 1,000 signatures.

Like several libraries across the country, the St Charles city-county has been at the center of increased Republican-backed efforts to ban books that discuss race, gender or sexuality.

In a 2022 interview with the Guardian, Kuhl spoke about the difficulties of managing a library amid new laws targeting books.

“We are unsure on what someone can interpret as sexually explicit,” Kuhl said in the interview, referring to a broadly written law that criminalizes anyone making sexually explicit material available at a school, including several acclaimed books by queer authors.

“To be blunt, it feels like we’ve moved backwards in time. We’re in a culture of fear.”