From the archive, 13 April 1985: Book about convent sex bursts on US

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/13/lesbian-nuns-convent-sex-book

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WashingtonA book which lifts the habit on romance in the cloisters of America’s convents has become a publishing sensation. Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, is a collection of reminiscences from 51 women, nine of whom are still bound by their vows of sexual relations inside the nunnery. It is edited by two university teachers who are avowed lesbians and former nuns.

Published by a small feminist/lesbian publishing house in Florida, the work attracted little attention at first. But after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston began to take an interest all that changed: now it is heading for the New York Times best seller lists.

Much of the book’s success can be indirectly attributed to the actions of the Boston archdiocese which became worried by an interview with the authors in the Boston Globe. This mentioned that the two former nuns were soon to be featured on a local television show.

Father Peter Conley of Boston, concerned that this “pornographic” work should not gain further currency, apealed to the NBC station in Boston not to run the programme, arguing that it would be “an affront to the sensitivity of catholics.” The television station, operating in a strongly Irish Catholic city, cancelled its broadcast.

But freedom of speech is seen as sacrosanct in the US, and the Church’s action was seen as an assault on the First Amendment, which guarantees this freedom. The Boston Globe took up the cudgels on behalf of the book and it has not looked back since.

The authors, Rosemary Curb, associate professor of English at Rollins College in Florida, and Nancy Manahan, until recently a teacher at Napa Valley College in California, have become television personalities.

This week, they appeared on the nationally shown Donohue television show, and the book - which was only being carried in a network of gay and lesbian book stores throughout the country - has now moved to the front stands of the large book chains, Dalton and Waldenbooks.

Some 125,000 copies have come off the presses of the small Florida printing house. The demand has become so great that Warner Books this week paid a reputed six-figure sum for paperback rights, and will begin mass production of the work later this year.