Last week the gay blogs were all over the story of Brent Hartinger’s book Geography Club being banned in Tacoma, Washington. Bradford Shellhammer recently caught up with Brent to discuss his book, Oprah, and how Queerty readers can help.

What happened with your book being banned?

Well, for a few days, I wasn't exactly sure. But now I've talked to a lot of the people involved and started to piece it all together--a little bit like Woodward and Bernstein investigating Watergate!

Basically, some parents complained to the library of a high school in University Place, Washington. They had learned the that library carried my book and that it was "gay." They hadn't read it, but that was enough to make them furious. The library referred them to the PTA, who basically said, "Sorry, we can't ban a book for being gay." So the parents read the book and made a long list of "objections," none of which were the gay thing exactly. Then they presented that list to the superintendent of the school district. One of their objections was the fact that my main characters first meet through an Internet chat room (though, while there, they chat until they know for a fact that they are definitely both students going to the same high school, so we're not talking about an "anonymous" hookup here!). Anyway, the superintendent had just seen a special on Internet predators, and I guess the school had had a problem with that in the past. So she zeroed in on that, and decided to ban the book--in part, I'm sure, to appease the angry parents.

Here's where it gets interesting. No one was supposed to find out about what had happened. But an anonymous person--let's call them "Deep Throat"! --went to the local newspaper. They wrote about it, then the AP picked it up, and all the local news broadcasts, and then it went nationwide on the blogs and in USA Today. Needless to say, it's been CRAZY on my end!

There will be a school board meeting in December where they will consider overturning the ban. I will try to be there to speak, but I've been getting these emails from this Leviticus-spouting whack-job, so I'm a little worried about someone slashing my tires.

The interview continues after the jump.

[Read On ...]

• First Jake played down the queer factor in Brokeback Mountain. Now Heath attempts to make it appear like the straightest gay love story ever told.

• Madge loves the gays so much she's producing a Melrose Place-type drama for Logo.

• In our opinion there's only one person who should be banned from the boy scouts. He's the guy wearing a sequined glove, plastic nose and carries a chimp named Bubbles.

• A novel aimed at teens, which involves meetings between gays over the Internet, has been banned in a Tacoma-area school district due to its "casual and loose approach to sex" and not because it's a book about a bunch of queers in high school. No, really.

• Last week the city of Poznan, Poland denied a LGBT group a permit for a pride march saying it would “be a serious danger to social order and property.” Supporters showed up anyway and were promtply arrested. Whew. The threat to Poland's frail social order is over.