By james art 
COLUMBIA — Seven books must be removed from South Carolina public school library shelves and classrooms, while three classics can remain, the state Board of Education decided Tuesday.
The decision was the first time the board has considered whether to remove or retain books under a new regulation banning books that contain “sexual conduct.” Board members voted unanimously to follow the recommendations of Department of Education staff and a committee that reviewed the textbooks last week.
Instead of waiting for parents to challenge the books at the local level and appeal the districts’ decisions, commission members asked department officials to review a total of 11 books that had already faced local opposition or had been raised during public hearings about the regulation .
That created some conflict among board members, who said they believed the regulation was intended to create a way for parents to appeal decisions made by local school boards they disagreed with. The state board should stick to that decision and no longer select its own books for review, board chairman David O’Shields said.
“The dissonance is is it top-down, is it bottom-up, is it both?” said O’Shields, who is also superintendent of Lawrence County School District 56.
The goal was to give educators more guidance by example, said board member Christian Hanley, who requested the review as committee chair. Staff members who made the list included “1984,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Romeo and Juliet” to allay concerns they would violate the regulation, he said.
Teachers called the rule vague, saying it confused what they could or couldn’t use in classrooms. The regulation does not define “sexual conduct” on its own, but instead links it to a section of state obscenity law.
According to some critics, some of the books the board members felt further confused things. They pointed to passages from “1984” in which two characters have sex, questioning why this did not violate the regulation.
“Voting to keep ‘1984’ creates a vague and unpredictable standard that is impossible for teachers and administrators to meet,” said Josh Malkin, director of advocacy for the state American Civil Liberties Union.
The difference, Hanley said, is that books taken off the shelves have “multiple, express, extensive, graphic or detailed descriptions of sexual behavior.” Mentioning or alluding to sex, as is the case in To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet, is not enough to get a book off the shelves, he said.
‘1984’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to be considered under new SC rule for ‘age appropriate’ books
The sexual passages in “1984” are not so descriptive as to violate the regulation, Hanley said, though he added that they come close.
“When I read this book — and I’ve read it more than once — it’s as if George Orwell expected the South Carolina legislature to adopt their definition of sexual content, because he went right to the line, but never crossed it,” Hanley said.
Board members are not required to read the books they vote on, which has also raised concerns among some critics. Reading the whole thing isn’t necessary because a single sex scene, regardless of context, would violate the regulation, Hanley said.
“No one has to read the entire Playboy magazine cover to cover to find out that it contains pornography,” Hanley said.
Agency officials verified that all books were available in at least one school library in the state and pulled the passages directly from physical copies of the book, said Robert Cathcart, a policy adviser.
Still awaiting resolution is “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins. The committee postponed a vote on it after hearing from people who said the 2004 novel helped them deal with meth addiction. That was the point of the book, which Hopkins based on his daughter’s struggle with drugs, Hopkins said in a statement.